Populist Gimmicks, Dismantling Checks: How the Govt Just Won't Let Delhi Breathe

Almost 10 years ago, on January 1, 2016, Delhi had dared to act. It launched the odd-even car-rationing scheme – a desperate but decisive action against the city’s most visible polluter. As head of the Delhi government’s policy think-tank, I had convened a team of leading environmental experts months earlier. Back then, Delhi didn’t have a reliable pollution inventory – no clear data on what was poisoning us or in what proportion. Yet after weeks of analysis, the experts reached an emphatic conclusion: if Delhi wanted clean air, it had to strike at its biggest culprit – vehicular emissions. 

Since then, study after study – from the Ministry of Earth Sciences, the Centre for Science and Environment, and TERI – has confirmed that vehicles are the single largest source of Delhi’s PM2.5, contributing between 41% and 51% of the city’s pollution.

Delhi has over 10 million registered vehicles — not counting the 6 million petrol and diesel vehicles already past the age limit of 15 and 10 years respectively. Along with the millions of cars, two-wheelers, and commercial vehicles that come into the city every day and spew out PM2.5 and NOx, you have a city poisoning itself on four wheels.

The polluted air is causing an unprecedented rise in asthma, lung diseases, heart problems, and strokes. Pollution kills more people in Delhi than obesity or diabetes. How is this then not a public health emergency on the same level as COVID? Why are there no daily health bulletins, no advisories, no emergency financing, no Mann ki Baat? Instead, Delhi has normalised a “pollution season” even as India proclaims itself a Vishwa Guru. 

Instead of tightening the rules on vehicular emissions, the new Delhi government is systematically dismantling them. It has quietly diluted the Supreme Court’s 2018 order to phase out Delhi’s dirtiest vehicles – diesels over 10 years and petrol cars over 15. This July, government suspended the ban on refuelling these polluting vehicles, citing citizens’ “emotional attachment” to their vehicles. As a result, nearly 6 million polluting vehicles were back on the roads. Then more recently the government has permitted the deregistered vehicles to get re-registered outside Delhi-NCR. The argument is that this will move the polluting vehicles to other states. It is an insult to reason. We all share the common air shed. If fumes from farm fires from Punjab and Haryana do not stop at the states' borders, then how vehicular pollution from neighbouring states won’t enter Delhi? Also what stops the owners of these vehicles from driving them back into the city after re-registering them in neighbouring states? 

The populist gimmicks – designed to please the electorate – have not stopped with rehabilitating old polluting vehicles. This year, both the Delhi government and the Union government pleaded before the Supreme Court not to protect citizens from poison in the air, but to secure the “right” to burst firecrackers. The ban was lifted.

Also read: A Diwali Of Epic Proportions: Delhi Pollution This Year Was Highest Compared To Last Four Years

For three nights Delhi exploded, firecrackers went off across the city. The morning after Diwali the capital woke up under a lid of smoke so thick you could chew it. And then, to complete the theatre of charade, the Delhi government floated the grand spectacle of artificial rain — a stunt that failed as dramatically as “green” crackers. Then the Delhi government pulled another stunt – announcing an “innovation challenge” with Rs 50 lakh prizes for start-ups to “solve” air pollution. One more cruel joke from a government that champions firecrackers in the name of religion and defends old polluting cars as family heirlooms. 

Delhi’s crisis endures not for lack of solutions, but because of political deceit – leaders who pretend to act while letting the city choke. When London, Los Angeles, and Beijing were choking in in thick, brown, acrid air, they didn't respond with populist exceptions, pseudo-science, and innovation hackathons. They shifted coal plants and polluting industries, limited new vehicle registrations, and spent billions on clean public transport, last mile connectivity and cycling infrastructure. Their actions and policies were based on science, political will, and sustained enforcement.

Vehicles remain Delhi’s biggest polluter. The entire NCR needs a robust, electric, and reliable public transport system, making cars optional rather than indispensable. Delhi-NCR has a world class metro, but third class bus and last mile connectivity, because of which for a large number of people car remains the preferred mode of transport.

According to the CAG, the Delhi Transport Corporation added only two buses between 2011–12 and 2021–22. The fleet actually shrank – from 4,344 buses in 2015-16 to 3,937 in 2022-23 – despite hundreds of crores available. By contrast, Beijing has a fleet of 23,000 public buses (as of 2024). 

Not surprising then that the Delhi-NCR adds 15-20 lakh vehicles annually. 

An efficient bus network depends on integrated control over service levels, street and bus stops design, infrastructure, and enforcement. In Delhi no single body currently has that integrated authority. Delhi’s bus governance has design flaws. It is shaped by multiple agencies, each performing different statutory roles:

• DTC/DIMTS/DTIDC/Transport Department: policy and permits (Transport Dept), operations (DTC), technical-ITS support (DIMTS), and infrastructure such as terminals and depots (DTIDC).
• PWD: arterial roads, lane markings, signals
• MCD: local roads, shelters, footpaths, vending zones
• DDA: ROW planning, depot land approvals
• Delhi Traffic Police: enforcement of lane discipline and traffic rules

This institutional fragmentation is the core reason why bus reform has not achieved outcomes comparable to the Delhi Metro. Unless the public transport across NCR is made world class complimenting the Delhi metro with high quality buses, and last mile connectivity, the spectacular rise in private vehicle ownership and usage will not cease.   

The government of India and the government of NCT Delhi can create a joint venture for bus services, along the lines of DMRC. This would consolidate planning, procurement, operations, and fare integration under one empowered, technocratic authority, much like DMRC. Coordination with PWD, MCD, DDA and Delhi Police would be institutionalised through formal frameworks. After stabilising Delhi operations, this model can evolve into an NCR Bus & Transit Corporation with participation from Haryana, UP, and Rajasthan – mirroring the DMRC’s regional success.

Expecting the Delhi government to impose congestion pricing or demarcating low-emission zones – as London did – would be naïve. But it can still push hard on electric mobility. Delhi’s 2020 EV policy was a start; by 2022, over 10% of new vehicles sold were electric. Now is the time to scale that to 25%, 50%, and beyond. Every diesel bus or petrol scooter replaced is pollution we don’t breathe. Like Beijing, Delhi must also invest in last-mile connectivity and protected cycling lanes—so people don’t have to walk for miles to access major transit hubs. 

Also read: Suffocating Republic

It is still cheap and easy to pollute in Delhi. After vehicles, the next two big yearlong sources of pollution are construction dust (~20%) and industry emissions (~18%). According to a 2024 CPCB report, 46% of the jobs at the Delhi Pollution Control Committee are empty. They need to be filled right away with trained inspectors who have modern sensors and the power to enforce the law without fear or favour. 

Every polluter, from businesses that burn coal to brick kilns on the outskirts of Delhi, must feel the weight of the law. Diesel generators and open waste fires must be fined out of existence. 

All factories within 300 kilometres of Delhi must install scrubbers and emissions monitors that work in real time. Beijing did this with ruthless efficiency, cutting coal use by millions of tonnes and making polluters clean up or shut down. Delhi-NCR can do it too, by a mix of incentives and penalties. The air in Delhi is the same as that in Noida, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad, and Panipat. If Delhi electrifies its buses, the suburbs must do the same.If burning is banned here, it must be banned across NCR. Anti-pollution policies need to be uniform across the region. 

For years, the Centre-Delhi power struggle kept the governance in the city paralysed. Now, even under a double-engine sarkar, the engines are different, but the smoke is the same. Delhi can still clean its air – but only when its leaders end the deceit and act with integrity and decisiveness. 

Ashish Khetan is a lawyer and specialises in international law.

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