What are the primary causes of the persistent smog crisis affecting Delhi and other parts of North India?
07.06.2025 11:59
The SMOG and air pollution in Delhi and rest of India is NOT limited to only 3 months in a year, but is everlasting throughout the year.
Mining of coal in Jharia started in 1894, and has increased ever since. The first fire in Jharia mines was reported in 1916. It is not exactly known how the fire started. Coal fires can be caused by lightening, forest fires, human accidents, and improper shutting down of old mines; and are common across the world. The fire in Jharia started when the mines were owned by private businessmen who exploited local labour and cared little about the miners’ safety. So most likely indifferent and unsafe blasting and failure to cover the pits after use with sand and water as per the proper procedure led to the fires.
JADUGUDA, JHARKHAND
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The people of Jaduguda are exposed to radioactivity in several ways: uranium mining and milling operations produce dust and release radon gas, both of which are inhaled by miners and cause internal irradiation. Uranium ore is transported in uncovered trucks on bumpy roads, causing radioactive debris to fall off and land on the side of the road. The mine's tailings retain high percentage of the original radiation and are dumped in unlined and uncovered ponds, which emit radon gas and gamma radiation. Villages which are in close proximity of the tailing ponds are the worst affected. During the dry season, dust from the tailings blows through these villages. During the monsoon rains, radioactive waste spills into the surrounding creeks and rivers, causing further internal radiation as villagers use the contaminated water for washing and drinking.
In 1994 the World Bank provided a loan of 12 million US dollars and sent two reputed consultants to study the problems concerning the mine fires. According to the World Bank report, the total estimated cost for extinguishing the fires by excavation would be around 2.4 billion US dollars…should be considerably increased by now.
Okay. So, I wasn't gonna answer this as I feel that we all be getting overdosed on the pollution thing…
It's the culmination of decades of wrong policy decisions, misplanning, greed and govt inaction & apathy, that all still continue even today, across years, across administrations and across political parties. The money is there but it is mostly being spent on flashy projects that enrich a select few, instead of fixing up the grassroot issues that would benefit all Indian citizens and our future generations. It's more a matter of awareness and political will than anything else.
Air Pollution Causes
So, What?!
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So. We got an irradiated township that spews radiation into its air, water and gases. It's causing problems but there's no never mind to it because…superpower!
According to a study done by a team from Indian Doctors for Peace and Development (IDPD), there has been a significant rise in the cases of congenital deformities among infants, increased sterility; and elevated numbers of deaths due to cancer. Reduced life expectancy among people living near the mines was also documented, 68.33% people are dying before the age of 62. Another study done by Hiroaki Koide of Kyoto University, Japan reveals high uranium contamination in the areas around the tailing pond and along the stream that carries the tailing waste to the local river, Subernarekha. It also found high level of radiation on roads through which trucks carry uranium ore to the mill in Jadugoda.
In the East Singhbhum district of the state of Jharkhand, lies JADUGUDA, India's uranium source.
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Depleted groundwater- Yup. This also causes air pollution. Absence of underground water streams leads to increase in radiation underground. This radiation may travel to the surface in two forms- as Radon and as radioactive gas. Bangalore, for example, has a serious problem of Radon contamination, which most Bangaloreans are unaware of.
India's geography - India is a victim to its own geography in this regard. The Himalayas to the North and Northeastern sides and the Thar desert to the west create a virtual corner that traps the air and wedges the pollution in between.
Bituminous coal has an average carbon content of approximately 66%. Burning 1 kg of bituminous coal will produce 2.42 kg of carbon dioxide. So, 37 million times 2420 gives you about 90 million tonnes of CO2 that's been released from Jharia since 1916. That's ohhhh about a million tonnes of CO2 being added in the Indian Air, on an average every year.
But then, out there in my travels on Quora, I came upon this dude who started crying about how it's impossible to breathe in Delhi because of the pollution caused by the farmers. He said that “the farmers are annadata for the whole year and mrityudata for three months”. The poetry is all well and good but the sheer ignorance in this statement and the mindset that gave birth to it, made me write this answer.
However, it's interesting to note that the stubble burning issue can be solved by the govt within ONE week, if they really wanted to sort it out.
Imagine your walking on a road and it suddenly explodes with flames going up to 70ft in the air. This is a reality for people living in Jharia. Add to this the effects of global warming, changing wind patterns, earthquakes, shifting of tectonic plates, and the menace of illegal mining accompanied with state apathy and corruption; the situation continues to get worse. According to BCCL estimates, the fires have already devoured about 37 million tonnes of coal. Getit?! 37 million tonnes of coal burnt away in 100 years. Another two billion tonnes of coal has become inaccessible, resulting in direct losses worth $220 billion.
So. What will it be? Should the govt spend 14 billion US dollars on building airports or would you rather spend that amount in cleaning up the fcking air? Seems like a no contest to me but hey…actions speak louder than words, huh!
And lemme indicate the scale of drastic action required. How about demolishing the Delhi Metro? And demolishing several existing skyscrapers or elevated highways/ bridges? Impossible you say?! Fine. Then breath the toxicity. Things have already reached beyond that level.
You start doing that today, and MAYBE, your grandkids might breathe in good air. That's right. It's pretty much hopeless for you AND your kids, but your grandkids still got a shot.
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Extra pollution - Pollutants from vehicle exhaust increase by 80% if the vehicle is running at a speed less than 50 kmph. This happens because the engine is not running at full capacity and fails to burn through all the impurities in the fuel. Congestion in cities and unplanned traffic leads to slow moving vehicles that causes increase in the level of pollutants in the air.
This unplanned development has generated a few problems of its own -
If you ask any person in Delhi NCR about why there is so much pollution in the air, the educated illiterates, they all have a standard answer- because of vehicles, construction dust and stubble burning.
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In that much, the question is bang on! What causes a PERSISTENT smog crisis in Delhi and Northern India?
UCIL, the Govt PSU responsible for mining, refuses to acknowledge the problems of the local communities and is opening new mines around Jaduguda and in other parts of the country. Jaduguda, which means the land of magic in the local sadri language, was once a place of scenic beauty, dense forests, small villages surrounded by hills and hardworking tribal people, but is now a man-made hell.
See??! How the winds be flowing?!
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More than 100,000 tonnes of nuclear waste is stored in the tailing ponds of Jaduguda, which produces large amount of toxic gases and nuclear radiation contaminating the water, vegetation, soil and subsequently entering the food chain. The dumped nuclear waste can remain radioactive and dangerous for millions of years.
But that impression is misplaced IMO. As there's a hell of a lot more to it than just those three things.
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Most importantly, we must understand and accept that this situation is NOT improving anytime soon and is set to get considerably worse before it gets any better.
Now, WHY is the pollution in two far off Eastern towns relevant in case of Delhi?! Well, you see the wind…it flows from one place to another. So the Southwest Monsoon Winds come from the Bay of Bengal to inland India bringing rain.
Jharia, a coalfield and former town, in the northern Jharkhand state in eastern India, is just seven kilometres away from Dhanbad, Jharkhand’s second largest town. The coalfield lies in the Damodar River valley and covers about 280 sq km. The bituminous coal produced there is suitable for coke (most of India’s coal comes from the Jharia and Raniganj fields in the valley). Coal mining began in Jharia in 1894, and there are now more than 20 underground mines and several large open-cast coal mines there.
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Then there are a multitude of other factors such as silica dust from construction, India being the world's no.1 importer of asbestos, unregulated usage of PCBs in Indian electrical wires although PCBs have been banned a few years back, unfettered flow of pollutants from the industries (don't think that that foam in Yamuna don't affect the air), open garbage mountains that get set on fire due to androgenous and natural causes…the list goes on and on and on.
Yknow what…the AQI scale in India goes up only to 500. The international agencies have registered AQI levels upto 1600 in Delhi NCR in recent days.
India’s coal mines were nationalized in 1971, when 70 fires were discovered. Forty-six years into the formation of Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL), however, the fires raging underneath Jharia have only worsened as BCCL has started open pit mining, resulting in one of the world’s oldest and most widespread mine fires today. Jharia coal mine is spread across an area of 450 sqkm with nearly 5 lakh lives depending on the region. At Jharia and nearby regions, fire continues to devour the underground at 67 different areas. In many places, coal continues to burn at temperatures up to 700 degrees centigrade, a few metres below the earth’s surface, defying all human efforts to extinguish it.
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The ore is milled to separate the uranium from other ore components. Waste from the milling process poses significant health and environmental hazards. It takes more than 1000 metric tonnes of ore to get 2 metric tonnes of uranium (to obtain a typical uranium concentration of 0.2 per cent). More than 998 tonnes of waste is generated in the process. This waste, called mill tailings, contains 85 per cent of the radioactivity in the original ore along with heavy metals and chemical toxic materials. When discharged from the mill, the tailings are roughly 40 per cent solids and 60 per cent liquid. According to estimates made by M. V. Ramana of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Princeton University, US, the amount of waste produced during mining and milling is 4.1 million tonnes. To obtain a purer uranium ore grade of 0.03% would increase the toxic waste to 9.3 million tonnes.
The toxic air in India is caused by a multitude of factors, most of which the individual citizens, even collectively, can do NOTHING about. Civic planning, govt apathy and pattern of spread of development are the biggest contributors to India's toxic air. And this issue falls squarely in the GoIs purview.
Incidentally, the PM 10 levels in Jharia were measured at 295 µg/m3, while that of Dhanbad registered the same at 238 µg/m3,ll in 2017. And…
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But BEYOND all this, there's more.
The SMOG and air pollution is NOT just limited to Delhi. There's hardly any place in India where you can get fresh air except the Andaman and the Lakshadweep islands.
Building downwash- Greed. It's been one of the foundational causes of downfall of civilizations. And it's playing right out in India. Unbridled construction has led to towers of brick and concrete and erection of bridges in metro areas that has led to obstruction of flow of wind. Not only that, the high speed winds hit a structure and travel down creating a canyon effect and literally exerting a downward pressure keeping the ground level pollution pressed down. This is also a reason why planting trees is NOT always a good idea in an urban setting.
Coal fires are notoriously difficult to kill. Coal, by its nature, catches fire very easily and continues to burn until the fuel or the oxygen supply is cut, or the temperature needed to sustain the fire is brought down. Filling of sand, water, removing burning coal from the fire’s path using bulldozers have been proven to be useful to some extent at Jharia. But the scale of the underground fire here is staggering.
In my earlier answers, I have mentioned a few of these reasons, so I’ll just briefly mention them again here:
By 2032, India hopes to generate 63 GW of nuclear power that would cut its dependence for energy and put it on the path to progress. But progress, they say, comes at a price. Jaduguda, in the eastern state of Jharkhand, is that price. This small township is home to the world's finest uranium ore, magnesium diuranate, the fodder for India's nuclear dream and Jaduguda's nightmare- uranium radiation.
To act this way about putting out coalfires while riding your ass about burning firecrackers and driving a BS4 car with a valid PUC, seems criminal, doesn't it?!
Global wind patterns - The global winds such as the North and Southwesterlies carry dust and pollution from other parts of the globe that lands up in India, and from within the country that spreads all over.
And if you wanna do something about it, pressurize your government to take serious and drastic steps.
And now you know what that wind is possibly carrying- carbon particles?! Hdroxyls?! FRs?! Irradiated dust or gas?! Or aerosolised contaminants?! Maybe all.
My intention, dear readers, is not to alarm you. No, I mean to reiterate that we should stop talking in absolutes and understand that a variety of factors are responsible for India's toxic air. I don't say that the people who cry about things like stubble burning and firecrackers are ill-intentioned, but IMO, they are most definitely ill-informed.
Conclusion
But wait. There's still more.
Unplanned development - The Indian policymakers & planners penchant for concentrating development in select areas has led to congestion and low resource availability in these areas. Be it contamination free food, groundwater, or clean air.
JHARIA, JHARKHAND
India's power generation - Over 65% of our power generation depends on thermal power today and this dependance is set to increase in the foreseeable future, SDGs be damned. And only 5% of the Indian thermal power plants have carbon control equipment installed on them.
It doesn't matter which party you support or which leader you like- everybody breathes the same air. Demand Swift, positive and effective action on this from your leaders.
These are the hard facts.