India faces a nationwide air pollution emergency that transcends Delhi.
It violates Article 21’s guarantee of life and dignity.
The situation demands urgent judicial intervention and societal awakening.
India is living through a quiet, invisible genocide. It does not provoke agitation, does not occupy primetime discourse, does not shake governments: Yet it kills more Indians each year than riots, terror, epidemics and natural disasters combined.
The insistence on reducing toxic air to a “Delhi-NCR problem” is not merely a misdiagnosis, it is a national delusion. Air pollution in India is not regional, seasonal or circumstantial and is no longer merely an environmental challenge.
It is the gravest constitutional crisis and emergency of our time: A daily violation and erasure of Article 21’s guarantee of human dignity and life itself.
On November 26, 2025, Delhi’s AQI pierced above 335-450 and the NCR cities — Gurugram, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Noida, Muzzaffarnagar, Hapur — bled past 300-400. But the same poison now engulfs the length and breadth of the north and east of the country: Lucknow recorded an AQI of 280, Kanpur 260, Varanasi 220, Prayagraj 250, Patna 240, Muzaffarpur 230, Kolkata 206, Howrah 200, Jaipur 250, Jodhpur 210, Bikaner 190, Agra 230, Meerut 310, Moradabad 290, Bareilly 270, Aligarh 260, and even farther-flung cities like Hisar, Bathinda, Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Dehradun all trapped above 200-300.
This is no longer a “Delhi problem”. From the plains of Haryana and Punjab to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, across Rajasthan and Bengal, a single toxic shroud of PM2.5 has locked in over 1.46 billion Indians.
In the central and southern peninsula, Nagpur’s VNIT recorded an AQI of 203, Bhopal’s TT Nagar 187, Mumbai’s Bandra Hill 229, Hyderabad’s US Consulate 183, Bengaluru’s Shivapura 163, Chennai’s Alandur 167, Kollam’s Pollayatode 172.
One nation, one shared blanket of toxic air. These numbers are not anomalies, but reflect a national air-shed crisis that cannot be localised or politically compartmentalised.
Summer only hides the corpse; winter flings it out in the streets.
The PM2.5 that kills Indians is indifferent to seasons, borders, politics or media narratives. It remains in our lungs long after the headlines fade. And yet, the country slips into annual amnesia, outraged in November, indifferent by March, forgetful by May. This cyclical forgetfulness itself has become a structural part of the crisis.
A constitutional crisis and our attention span, towards this year-round air pollution emergency, cannot be seasonal. But our outrage sadly is.
The Supreme Court has long held that the right to life is not mere animal existence, but life with dignity, health and breath. In Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar (1991), the Court declared unequivocally that “right to life includes the right of enjoyment of pollution-free water and air”.
In the MC Mehta line of cases, from vehicular emissions to industrial pollution, the Court repeatedly reaffirmed that clean air is a constitutional entitlement, not a policy aspiration. In Vellore Citizens’ Welfare Forum (1996), the Court constitutionalised the Precautionary Principle and the Polluter Pays Principle, giving environmental protection the support of enforceable fundamental rights.
And yet, despite judicial clarity, the response of governments has been marked by inertia, fragmentation and political hesitation; swinging between tokenism and paralysis. The constitutional promise of life is quietly withering in a haze of administrative inertia and apathy, fragmented governance and political expediency.
What is a republic worth if it cannot protect the breath of its people?
The framers of our Constitution anticipated moments when the governments might fail their moral duties. Articles 32 and 226 were meant for moments such as these, empowering the Supreme Court and High Courts to intervene, even suo motu, when the executive collapses into inaction and fundamental rights face systemic assault. The Courts have always stepped in whenever institutional lethargy threatened to turn constitutional rights into hollow promises.
In Re: Air Pollution in Delhi-NCR, the Supreme Court monitored air quality, regulated stubble burning and compelled inter-state coordination. The MC Mehta series saw the Court intervene repeatedly when bureaucratic paralysis became chronic.
High Courts across the country have taken suo motu cognisance of river contamination, groundwater depletion, illegal construction and ecological degradation. The National Green Tribunal, recognised in MCGM v Ankita Sinha (2021), can also act suo motu where urgent environmental protection is needed and authorities fail to provide redress. These principles are binding and impose a constitutional duty on governments to act with urgency and coherence.
This constitutional crisis is not a jurisdictional vacuum, but a pressing need for judicial activism and vigilance, not judicial restraint.
There is, however, a deeper social fracture and moral contradiction that legal doctrines alone cannot repair.
India erupts in protest when religious, ideological or moral sentiments are hurt. A film dialogue, a song, a social media post, a speech, a book, or even a stray remark can trigger nationwide mobilisation, outrage in the streets, debates in Parliament and relentless primetime hysteria.
And yet, when the air is poisoned, when rivers carry sewage, when forests die and lakes vanish, when children cough blood, when elders struggle to breathe, when life expectancy shrinks, there is hardly any march, candlelight vigil, outrage or protest.
If our sentiments can be wounded by words, why do they not break when our breath itself is being snatched away?
What makes people’s indifference even more alarming is that every major religion practised in India explicitly demands environmental protection and stewardship.
The Sanatan Dharma reveres air as prana, rivers as goddesses, the earth as Dharti Mata. Islam identifies humans as trustees (khalifa) responsible for protecting creation. Christianity warns against profaning the Earth God entrusted to humanity. Buddhism speaks of compassion for all sentient beings and harmony with nature. Sikhism treats nature as the sartorial expression of the Divine. Jainism elevates non-violence toward all life to a foundational ethic. Zoroastrianism considers air, water and fire as sacred, to be kept pure.
If all faiths enjoin environmental care, how does a religious nation tolerate environmental destruction? How do the faithful justify burning garbage, bursting crackers, polluting rivers, abusing diesel vehicles, razing forests, and turning away as toxic air becomes normalised?
No deity, no scripture, no prophet, no spiritual tradition will forgive a civilisation that poisons the air and water, and destroys the natural world entrusted to it.
Article 51A imposes a duty on every citizen to protect the environment and develop scientific temper. Yet civic behaviour displays the opposite, apathy, indifference, and at times, people themselves actively polluting: From waste burning to contaminating rivers to unfazed emissions.
A constitutional crisis is never created by the State alone. It is sustained by public complicity.
India stands on the edge of a civilisational reckoning. Toxic air and contaminated water is not merely an environmental failure. It is a collapse of constitutional governance, civic duty and morality, religious obligation and national conscience.
The crisis has already engulfed us; the question is whether India has the courage to breathe the truth. History will not remember our excuses – only our silence.
Shashwat Anand is an advocate practicing at the Supreme Court of India and the High Court of Allahabad. Rajesh G Inamdar is an advocate-on-record at the Supreme Court of India. Views expressed are the authors’ own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth.