NEW DELHI: As the worst air pollution in years descended on India’s capital this week, the country’s health minister was not in New Delhi coordinating a response.

Instead, he was 800 miles away, campaigning in a state election.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, meanwhile, was in Nigeria, where he accepted an award from the country’s president before heading off to Brazil for the Group of 20 summit.

Neither have commented on the toxic air pollution back home.

Each year around the end of autumn, a blanket of smog descends on wide stretches of northern India and parts of Pakistan, as temperatures drop, winds grow still and farmers set their fields ablaze.

This year, pollution levels have been particularly shocking: Air Quality Index readings in New Delhi were more than 17 times acceptable levels earlier this week, surging above 1,700.

Yet, the response from officials has been no different. Schools were shut, traffic restricted and construction halted – similar to previous years.

And local and central government officials once again traded blame over who should take responsibility for a crisis that studies show is killing more than one million Indians a year.

At the heart of the policy inaction is India’s fractious politics.

Delhi is ruled by the opposition Aam Aadmi Party, whose leader Arvind Kejriwal is a vocal critic of Modi, while the Prime Minister’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) runs the national government.

On Monday, Delhi Chief Minister Atishi blamed the federal government for not doing enough to curb crop fires in surrounding states ruled by the BJP.

It was pushing “all of North India into a medical emergency,” the chief minister, who goes by one name, said.

Delhi’s environment minister on Tuesday said it was the central government’s “moral responsibility” to help Delhi.

The BJP branch in New Delhi, meanwhile, issued a flurry of social-media posts blaming Atishi’s party, which also controls the farm-belt state of Punjab and where illegal fires soared earlier this week.

The BJP singled out Kejriwal for ridicule and compared the party’s leaders to characters on the TV show Game of Thrones.

Asked for comment, the Health Ministry pointed to a health advisory it issued to states on Monday. Modi’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“It has become a blame game where one party accuses the other and then there are counter charges,” said Sandeep Shastri, a political scientist at Lokniti, a public policy think tank.

“If every party has only a short-term vision of seeking to gain a political benefit, then I think really we cannot go forward towards the solution.”

Deeper political obstacles in the country also fuel inaction.

India’s small-scale northern farmers, who burn their fields in advance of rotating winter crops, represent a key voting bloc and are quick to mobilise in response to political threats.

Among Delhiites, resignation is running high. Almost two-thirds of families in the capital said they plan to live with the pollution without making major changes to their routine, according to a survey by local advocacy group LocalCircles.

Shashi Tharoor, a longtime opposition lawmaker, said he held annual consultations on air quality since 2015, but “gave up last year because nothing seemed to change and no one seemed to care”.

“There is no sense of emergency,” said Parthaa Bosu, a Delhi-based air quality expert who heads a consulting firm.

“India is starting to get adjusted to the situation in a way.”

Delhi’s stop-gap measures to deal with the pollution don’t address the root causes, which require a more comprehensive political solution that transcends party politics, Bosu said.

National efforts like India’s National Clean Air Programme, launched in 2019, aren’t well administered, he added, pointing to reports showing that a large share of allocated funds aren’t spent.

“If it were terrorism, then would the centre step in and take control of the situation, or would it just let the state agencies deal with it?” he said. “I think a similar mechanism is required for air quality.”

Focus this year remained on northern-state crop fires, with the Punjab Remote Sensing Centre showing just under 10,000 such fires there since September. The Supreme Court in October reprimanded the central government and two nearby state governments for what they said was a failure to control the farm fires.

Local media reported a spate of farmer arrests in the state of Haryana in recent weeks over accusations of illegal crop burning.

Yet, farm fires account for only a share of India’s pollution, comprising up to 35% of the daily contribution of fine particles in Delhi in November, according to the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.

The rest comes from a wide mix of sources that further hinders pollution-busting efforts, including road emissions, construction, heavy industry and waste burning.

“Largely the pollution comes from within the city rather than coming from outside – due to unpaved pavements, burning of wood for heat, traffic,” said Frank Hammes, global chief executive officer at IQAir.

“Agriculture burning at this time of the year is definitely a crucial component but the burning of biomass and traffic too contribute to it.” 

 - Bloomberg