Delhi’s annual descent into a grey, choking winter is no longer an environmental anomaly; it is a predictable civic failure. Each year, the city feigns reacting with urgency once the air turns visibly toxic ~ closing schools, halting construction, and restricting vehicles ~ yet the predictability of the crisis exposes the hollowness of these responses. When emergency measures become seasonal routine, they cease to be emergencies and start resembling an admission of defeat.

The most troubling aspect of Delhi’s pollution crisis is not the severity of the air, but the normalisation of it. Residents have learned to read air quality numbers like weather forecasts, adjusting daily life around danger rather than demanding its removal. Children attend school online not because of floods or earthquakes, but because the air outside is unsafe to breathe. Courts shift to virtual hearings, flights are delayed, and visibility collapses – yet the city........

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