Air Pollution in India: A Crisis of Metropolitan Planning and Governance

The current air pollution crisis in Delhi has become a major public health concern, yet popular narratives continue to reduce it to seasonal problem and blame the farmers for stubble burning. This commentary argues that air pollution in Indian cities is the structural outcome of speculative metropolitan expansion. Drawing on remote-sensing evidence from the Hyderabad Metropolitan Region, we show how the state’s pursuit of real-estate driven growth, infrastructure-led expansion and the relocation of polluting industries to the periphery is leading to the creation new hotspots of air pollution. Ironically, the same middle-class homeowners who demanded infrastructure-intensive, gated urbanism now find themselves exposed to the environmental consequences of the model they endorsed. The deteriorating air quality has led to emergence of a new environmental movement led by middle class that unlike the previous protests is demanding regulatory accountability and enforcement of laws. We argue that air pollution is fundamentally a crisis of metropolitan governance and regulatory capture, and requires dealing with the nature of current urban expansion rather than shifting the blame and engaging in short term fixes.