The Hindu festival of Diwali is traditionally a time for families to get together, but for the past seven years, Vamika Grover, 32, has fled her home in Delhi as firecrackers send the city’s air quality spiraling into hazardous levels. Even a week later, she returns home to the lingering taste and smell of acrid air.

“I’ve been feeling a sense of breathlessness these past few years, and I would feel my lungs would have to do a lot of heavy lifting,” said Grover, a Hodgkin lymphoma cancer survivor. “Before, I felt the firecrackers during Diwali worsened the air quality, but it’s polluted throughout the year now, and it’s creating health issues for everyone.”

The Hindu festival of Diwali is traditionally a time for families to get together, but for the past seven years, Vamika Grover, 32, has fled her home in Delhi as firecrackers send the city’s air quality spiraling into hazardous levels. Even a week later, she returns home to the lingering taste and smell of acrid air.

“I’ve been feeling a sense of breathlessness these past few years, and I would feel my lungs would have to do a lot of heavy lifting,” said Grover, a Hodgkin lymphoma cancer survivor. “Before, I felt the firecrackers during Diwali worsened the air quality, but it’s polluted throughout the year now, and it’s creating health issues for everyone.”

India’s capital has reported alarming air pollution since October, with the air quality index (AQI) routinely crossing 300—three times above the generally safe threshold of 100—which is equivalent to smoking about 11 cigarettes a day. In late October, a top Indian pulmonologist advised people with chronic lung or heart diseases and those who can afford it to “leave Delhi” for six to eight weeks.

International monitoring platforms have frequently recorded hazardous levels exceeding 1,000 in parts of Delhi over the past few months, though the government app caps the pollution readings at 500, a limit set when the national index was launched in 2014.

The scenes of smog-wrapped buildings echo Beijing a decade ago, when the Chinese capital’s pollution crisis grabbed international headlines. But while China treated that moment as a national embarrassment and moved aggressively to improve air quality in the capital, India has largely normalized the crisis. The government continues to downplay its severity, questioning global AQI standards and data on air pollution-related deaths.

Yet it’s not just the capital where people are choking. Ghaziabad ranked as the most polluted Indian city in November, followed by Noida, Bahadurgarh, and Delhi, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), an international independent research organization.

“Residential biomass, industries, power plants, transport, and construction dust are the main sources of pollution in Delhi and surrounding areas,” Manoj Kumar, an air pollution and power sector analyst with CREA’s........

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