Why Delhi moms fear their children are becoming collateral damage to the city's smog apathy

Every winter, as the air quality index (AQI) levels touched 350, we waited for level three of the graded action response plan (GRAP 3) to be announced, then GRAP 4 at 400. Schools would go online, offices would quietly encourage work-from-home, construction would halt, Diwali crackers would be banned… And somehow, amidst this familiar chaos, we felt reassured — that at least someone, somewhere, was reacting. That a system existed. That we could plan around it.

So, we fled the city for a “pollution break”. Some took refuge in Goa, others in the hills — children attending classes by the beach or from mountain homestays. For the privileged, this became a ritual of endurance. We bought our way out of the poison with holidays and air purifiers. But the aam aadmi and his child had no such luxury. At the very least, the air we breathe should be equal. But even that has been capitalised — the rich buy cleaner air, while the poor survive on sheer will against the collective apathy.

Why do we refuse to look at ourselves as the problem? We want malls on what was once a forest, bigger cars, better comforts, never pausing to ask what it’s costing us. Instead, we fall for the yearly yin and yang of blame: the farmer, the cracker, the bureaucrat spraying token water in the name of “dust mitigation”. Nobody wanted to look at the full picture, because that meant admitting that “we” and not only they, were the problem.

And Delhi is not choking in isolation. The fertile Indo-Gangetic plains continue to suffocate from industrialisation, vehicular fumes, and our shared indifference. The Aravalis hacked, the winds slowed down, the smog deepened. A 2019 study by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago reportedly found that those living in the Indo-Gangetic plains are likely to lose seven years of life on average owing to the air pollution.

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It’s not as if people haven’t fought — there are laws, there are policies designed to address systemic problems. But are they enough? No. In a consumer-driven, capitalist economy, the system has picked up on our apathy and delivered exactly what we see: pollution as a product of convenience. Even the law, and its execution, seems to respond to demand and supply — not to justice, not to children gasping for air. And so, the expectation after event-driven spikes has remained reactionary for years, offering only small relief, when what we truly need is a complete systemic overhaul.

It’s taken me years to understand this — and I am not an expert. I am a mother. If I can see it, can’t they?

Then, this year started out differently. This year, the apathy became naked. No online school, no work-from-home advisory, no GRAP, till recently — the national capital region's AQI limit for GRAP restrictions was revised in December last year to 401 for GRAP 3 and 450 plus for GRAP 4. GRAP-3 was activated in Delhi earlier this week and for students of classes up to standard five, schools have been told to function in hybrid mode. On Thursday, a Supreme Court judge asked lawyers why they were in court despite the air pollution, when there was the option of a virtual hearing. But all this came after weeks of unreliable AQI data, denial and a deafening silence.

Parents like me were left staring at our children’s faces, wondering: what to choose — our child’s right to education or their right to health? These are choices no parent should ever have to make. How does one play god when the system refuses to act?

Around us, the masked and the unmasked coexist. I belong to the former and while I’d like to believe not all of the latter are unaware, the reality forces constant, immediate choices. Should I send my child to school? To the park? Play outside and inhale more dirt? The answer is always no. And yet, we are exhausted — trapped between fear and necessity, courage and survival. Sometimes we act, sometimes we don’t. The dichotomy is ours to bear, every single day.

The Covid pandemic taught us to fear death and act. We isolated, stayed indoors and demanded a vaccination, because mortality was at our doorstep. Here, death is slow, surreptitious, so it’s easier to look away, to ignore the need for a systemic “vaccination” against the air itself. Each time the unmasked see the masked, they turn away, unwilling to confront the reality that smog is not seasonal; it is endemic.

In this denial, it’s easier to pretend we aren’t the problem, to see ourselves as victims of bad policy, corrupt systems, and burning fields. But the real victims are our children. They suffer quietly, unaware why their heads ache or throats burn. And we — their parents — don’t want to see it. We scroll past, whisper to ourselves that it will be okay. It won’t. The band-aid has fallen off; underneath lies only rot.

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We live in an age of data. Some of us check AQI apps, refresh screens, bargain with numbers — hoping one station shows mercy. What we should be asking is: how can we make it safe? If the numbers don’t alarm you, what will move the needle to shouting, “Save our souls”?

Wake up. The pandemic should have taught us how blurred the boundaries are between the living and the dead. Yet here we are, treating this slow, choking endemic as just another season. This is not normal. It’s a disaster waiting to explode. Why can’t the masked and the unmasked, the privileged and the powerless, unite for the right to breathe?

For years, we clung to GRAP as our only way out of the three-month tunnel — believing that when the winter winds changed, we’d meet again at the Sunder Nursery — the heritage park complex adjacent to Humayun’s Tomb — sip coffee in the sun and pretend the pollution never forced us out of the city. We convinced ourselves this was normal.

Each winter, this city would kill a little more of us — silently, efficiently, without remorse — and we would open ourselves to the onslaught. Scientific evidence now links toxic air to asthma, heart and eye damage and cognitive decline in children. This isn’t apathy anymore — it’s criminal negligence. This isn’t a rich person’s problem. It’s not a farmer’s problem. This is a humanitarian crisis.

I am not an expert. I am a mother fighting for my child’s right to life, and in this struggle, we expect our guardians — the state, the policymakers, those in authority — to lead, so that we, the people, can follow. Last weekend, I went to a protest against air pollution at India Gate with my son, not as an activist, but as a mother who had run out of places to hide; not in defiance, but in desperation. We weren’t there to protest, only to be heard.

But all I saw were barricades, police lines, and an air of tension. We were just mothers, asking the four pillars of democracy (the executive, the legislature, the judiciary and media) to listen — we are the people, after all. On one side were masked parents and children gasping for air; on the other, the unmasked picnickers smiling for selfies under the same poisoned sky. I stood between them, looking at India Gate, once a symbol of sacrifice and honour, now blurred in smog.

This year has been a wake-up call — the “chalta hai [it’s okay]” plan has gone up in smoke. The absence of a plan left us completely exposed. We stood holding our children in one hand and their futures in the other — and the state machinery asked us to choose. Either way, who becomes the collateral damage here?

Panic makes me wonder — should I homeschool? Are there hybrid schools? As the yearly plan went for a toss, I scrambled to find indoor spaces for my son so he wouldn’t miss his Taekwondo classes or his park friends — yet another band-aid arrangement. But one begins to see through it all. When I was asked, “What do you want? What’s your solution?” I didn’t have one. I don’t have the expertise, but I need someone who does. I need a system that tells me what to do to protect my child. I am a mother. We are mothers who will work for our children. Extend a hand, and we will meet you there.

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All I hear now is — “Leave Delhi”.

But where do we go? Do we uproot our children from the only home they’ve known — from their school, their friends, their city? Do we abandon a place layered with memory and history, just to breathe cleaner air?

To be displaced by pollution — something that could have been prevented. It is a collective moral failure. It’s the creation of a lost generation, a community that will grow up with respiratory issues, anxiety, and grief. This isn’t migration; it’s forced exile by apathy.

We need to ask ourselves — should we still be complicit? If we’ve been the problem, how can we not be part of the solution? It’s time to rise — not in anger, but in resolve. To demand air that doesn’t choke our children. To remind every authority there is, that the right to breathe is not negotiable. This is not someone else’s fight. It’s ours.

For some of us, it began a while ago. But for all of us — is it already too late?