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Chandrasekhar Mukherjee, in his mid-thirties, was used to donating blood regularly till 2022. All that came to an end as he was diagnosed with a slew of diseases led by respiratory distress. Mukherjee feels, and doctors admit, that the dust bowl of Durgapur is responsible for his current situation.
Prithvi Raj, a young doctor, has come to Durgapur recently and installed an air filter in his residence. The filter, meant to function for at least six months, has turned slate black from milk white within three months. Prithvi Raj has had to procure a new one.
Middle-aged social activist Kabi Ghosh, born and brought up in Durgapur, has his work cut out every day when he enters his ground floor organisation office in upmarket Bidhannagar and removes the thick layer of black dust atop his table. Ghosh feels vanishing public buses and booming private vehicles as well as high number of autos and totos (e-rickshaws) are responsible for the high pollution in the city, alongside industrial pollution.
The examples referred above are more the norm than the exception for Durgapur, located 170 kilometres northwest of Kolkata. The city has recently been tagged by IQ Air in its global study as the 24th most polluted city in the world, based on the level of highly toxic pollutant PM 2.5. Durgapur sits at the top of the pollution ladder in West Bengal, followed by twin industrial city Asansol.
Interestingly Durgapur, a city planned and designed at the behest of the state’s first Chief Minister Bidhan Chandra Roy around seven decades back, is a ‘Smart City’ and boasts nearly 26 per cent greenery; underlining the importance of taking multi-sectoral action in air pollution control. Currently, the city adopts water sprinkling as its main strategy to counter air pollution, while the prepared ‘Graded Response Action Plan’ remains largely on paper.
“The findings underline the importance of implementing a multi-sectoral strategy to counter air pollution embedded in both holistic policy and practice. In our recent study on National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) cities, we have found that most improved cities like Varanasi could achieve success as they could adopt multi-sectoral strategies for controlling dust and other pollutants; only water sprinkling will not do,” explained Anumita Roy Chowdhury, an air pollution expert and executive director of think tank, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).
Such planning gets handicapped in absence of adequate data. “We are still waiting for the final report from IIT Delhi on Durgapur’s air pollution emissions inventory, source apportionment and atmospheric carrying capacity study. But it seems that the high amount of road dust and industrial emission, clubbed with vehicular and trans-boundary pollution impacts the city,” explained Kalyan Rudra, West Bengal Pollution Control Board (WBPCB) chairman to Down To Earth (DTE).
WBPCB sources admit that the report has been long due, with several deadlines being already missed. IIT Delhi, being quizzed, however claimed that they have already submitted the report to the WBPCB. “We have submitted the report to WBPCB,” wrote a senior IIT Delhi scientist, linked with the study, to DTE.
The chairperson of the city corporation, equivalent to mayor, seemed clueless on how to counter the surging air pollution in the city. “It’s a fact that air pollution is a problem in the city despite it being a planned and green one, with about 26 per cent greenery. We are trying a few things but are handicapped as no funds have presently been released to us under the NCAP. This is because the corporation is not being currently run by an elected body,” Anindita Mukherjee, the chairperson, told DTE.
“Durgapur is part of an industrial belt driven by coal. Industries driven by coal are located either within several wards or at their fringe. But transport-related issues are also present,” admitted the official. Mukherjee accepted that the number and routes of public buses have dwindled over the years and shared plans to introduce a few new buses including electrical buses but was not sure about the roadmap.
While the official pointed out a lack of funds as the chief cause behind the current crisis, Central Pollution Control Board data shows that the city could not even utilise the funds already received. Data accessed shows that the city, till March 2025, could only spend Rs 26.78 crore of Rs 44.58 crore released since 2020-21. That is barely 60 per cent.
The ailment runs deeper than funds. WBPCB sources claimed that Durgapur has hardly been proactive in countering pollution. Officials of the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), the ministry-appointed advisor to the city in terms of implementing NCAP, could not remember when they last had a meeting on combating air pollution in Durgapur.
City officials, in turn, passed the buck to the WBPCB. “We neither have the financial nor the human resources to counter the problem. As you can understand, legal and illegal coal businesses thrive in the area under the patronage of local mafia, and we can do little. It is WBPCB’s responsibility to monitor the highly emitting and violating industries in the zone,” said an official refusing to be quoted. It is a claim that locals vindicate. “WBPCB is quite ineffective in countering rising industrial pollution within Durgapur,” pointed out activist Ghosh.
“We undertake occasional monitoring. But unless the local administration becomes active, the situation is difficult,” defended a WBPCB official.
As a result, the concentration of PM10, respirable particulate pollutant and the parameter considered under NCAP, was recorded at 106 micrograms per cubic metre (µg/m³) of air during 2023-24. The figure is less than the immediately precedent years, but still about 75 per cent higher than the national permissible limit of 60 µg/m³.
However, the global IQAir study pointed out that air pollution in Durgapur has worsened from 2023 to 2024, with 2024 data showing a 46 per cent increase in PM2.5 levels compared to 2023, driven by industrial activity, biomass burning, and transportation. The transport sector plays a significant role, contributing 20-30 per cent of the urban air pollution through vehicular emissions of PM2.5, NOx, and CO.
A city, where public buses thrived till the first decade of 2000, hardly has mass transport modes now. While private four- and two-wheelers as well as three-wheelers flourished during the last decade, the number of public buses declined.
Data shows that between 2017 and 2024, while about 25,000 private four-wheelers and 160,000 two-wheelers got registered in Durgapur. The total registration of public service vehicles was only 770, steadily declining from 180 registrations annually in 2017 to 82 in 2024. During the period, the number of autos and totos (e-rickshaws) skyrocketed, largely replacing public buses.
“The city has about 3,600 autos running on around 100 routes, each carrying around 80 passengers every day. Hence, nearly 300,000 people use autos every day,” stated a leader of a local auto union. Alongside, there have been 10,000 totos which cause large-scale congestion and, hence, pollution.
“Government-run public buses were quite frequently available till 2005. But since then, they gradually disappeared apart from a few minibuses that now ply. As the city is broadly divided into major pockets, you must either hire an app-based vehicle or an auto, or may be toto, to travel within the city if you do not have a personal four- or two-wheeler. Lack of public transport has facilitated the surge in procurement of private transport. The COVID-19 pandemics later strengthen this trend,” pointed out Ghosh.
“It is ironic that Durgapur, the city where the government-run public bus system was born in southern Bengal, is still the headquarters of South Bengal state Transport Corporation, now hardly has government buses. Here, the bus system ran from the 1960s. We even had double-deckers. But the number nosedived from the mid-1990s, and buses vanished from 2005-06, barring few routes now,” shared Kanchan Siddiqui, a local journalist and president of the Durgapur Press Club.
Siddiqui informed that in 1982, even trams were proposed for Durgapur though the idea could not take off. “When officials and workers from several public sector undertakings were given a golden handshake in the 1990s and early part of 2000 and many left jobs with large monetary compensation, a sizeable portion of them bought two- and four-wheelers,” observed Siddiqui, explaining the social context of the exponential rise in number of personal vehicles in the city.
Prashant Kumar, a pulmonologist at a private hospital in Durgapur, has come to the city with the responsibility of setting up a pulmonary unit in the hospital. He initially planned to go back once the deed was done. However, he subsequently chose to stay back, being overwhelmed by patients with respiratory complaints from the city. “I initially planned to go back after coming here in 2017 but had to stay back as the patient number increased rapidly,” said the doctor.
“Almost two-third of all patients in our hospital come with some respiratory complaints, which dominates both sexes and all age groups and include both smokers and nonsmokers,” said the doctor.
“While we often have patients with asthma, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and airway diseases, we also get patients with lung fibrosis and even lung cancers,” added Kumar.
“The problem of air pollution in Durgapur is primarily dust. The city is a dust bowl. Also, the toxic carbonaceous pollutants which piggyback on those dust particles and enter our system, trigger a range of respiratory and allied diseases,” pointed out air pollution expert Abhijeet Chatterjee from the Bose Institute.
Local politicians also expressed concern about the rising air pollution. “Air pollution in the city has increased to dangerous levels and something needs to be done immediately,” said state rural development minister Pradip Majumdar, also a local member of the Legislative Assembly, last winter. He expressed deep concern about the worsening air quality index (AQI) of the industrial town.
The people of Durgapur patiently await that magical ‘something’ to happen soon, as the public health crisis spikes and hospitals continue to be swarmed with patients with respiratory and related complaints.
“Many earlier had chosen to leave major cities and stay in Durgapur, being attracted by its green and clean environment. Unless the present pollution is taken care of, a u-turn may start to happen soon,” warned a local activist.
This article is part of our series on how India moves, which looks at the relationship between air quality and human mobility in cities and towns.