RTI Findings Show Delhi’s Air Pollution Crisis is Largely a Funding Failure

The shock lies not in how little was allocated, but in how even that paltry sum was treated, writes Vimlendu Jha.

The deeper shock lies not in how little was allocated, but in how even that paltry sum was treated, writes Vimlendu Jha.

(Photo: Kamran Akhter)

Delhi today does not have four seasons—it has five. Over the last decade, an entirely new “air pollution season” has colonised the calendar, spread between autumn and winter, and often seeps well into spring.

Yet, it has become increasingly clear that Delhi’s air pollution crisis is not seasonal at all, but a year-round condition with the air quality oscillating between “poor” and “very poor,” punctuated by hazardous spikes and relieved only briefly by the monsoon.

Though grey skies, burning eyes and itchy throats dominate headlines and flood social media this time of year, the harder questions of what is being done, who is accountable, and why nothing changes, are endlessly deferred.

One of the clearest indicators of genuine political intent in any pollution-control effort is the allocation of adequate financial resources.

Cities that succeeded did so not through slogans or seasonal gestures but through budgets proportional to the scale of the crisis, and by actually spending that money on structural reforms.

To see how Delhi compares with cities like Beijing, and to test the government’s stated commitment to cleaning the air, I filed an RTI seeking details of how much funding was allocated over the past five years, and how much of it was actually spent.

The RTI reply was nothing less than an I-told-you-so moment, a stunning indictment of policy lip service and fiscal neglect.

What the RTI Found

Over a five-year period, the government allocated just Rs 81.36 crore for combating air pollution in the national capital, an amount so minuscule that it borders on symbolic tokenism when measured against the scale of Delhi’s public health emergency.

But the deeper shock lies not in how little was allocated, but in how even that paltry sum was treated. Barely 17 percent of the total allocation was ever spent.

In the last two years alone, while Rs 38 crore was earmarked for pollution control, only Rs 1.35 crore was actually utilised. That's less than 3.5 percent of the available funds.

The numbers become even more absurd in specific financial years.

• In FY2021-22, the government allocated Rs 11.25 crore, yet not a single rupee was spent.

• In FY 2025-26, the allocation line item simply disappeared; the budget for air pollution mitigation was zero.

A report published in The Indian Express on 9 January shows that the tiny fraction that was spent went predominantly into one of the least effective, most cosmetic interventions available—sprinkling water on roads to settle dust, a momentary visual fix which does not reduce emissions, does not address sources, and does not alter long-term particulate loads. It merely dampens dust for a few hours until wind and traffic kick it back into the air.

Yet again, this can qualify at best as performativity firefighting, where the government’s main intent is to be ‘seen’ doing something about pollution mitigation, even if those measures have an insignificant impact on the ground.

Not Acting on Air Pollution is Costing Us More Than just Health

The fact that an AQI of 200 is now celebrated as “improvement” says everything about how deep this crisis runs.

I have always maintained that the cost of inaction is far higher than the cost of action, and nowhere is this clearer than in the economics of air pollution.

Multiple international studies show that polluted air is not just a health disaster but a massive economic drain.

In 2019 alone, air pollution cost India $36.8 billion, or 1.36 percent of GDP, due to lost labour, illness, and premature deaths.

Other analysis suggest India’s GDP could have been nearly 3 percent higher that same year if air quality met safe standards, thanks to improved productivity, fewer sick days, and reduced healthcare spending.

Globally, the World Bank estimates that poor air quality wipes out 5 percent of the global GDP, revealing how tightly economic growth is tied to clean air. These numbers make the conclusion very apparent, that failing to act is vastly more expensive than acting decisively.

Yet, Delhi’s fiscal response remains minimal. RTI replies from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), along with admissions in the mainstream media, point to chronic underspending and cosmetic measures that have only worsened the situation.

We know government(s) largely have been working on perception management rather than pollution management, and yet not focusing on those fiscal numbers is difficult to comprehend.

What Do We Need Money For, and How Much?

In the discourse, the example of Beijing often pops up. For years, Beijing was as polluted as Delhi, sometimes worse, and battled the same pressures of rapid urbanisation, high population density, industrial sprawl, and rising economic ambition.

Yet within a decade, it transformed its air quality trajectory. The comparisons that surfaced this winter were uncomfortable for sections of the nationalist media, which resisted the idea that India could learn from a geopolitical rival.

But the evidence could not be ignored.

Beijing’s clean air turnaround was not accidental or miraculous; it was built on massive, consistent investment, strict enforcement, scientific transparency, and most crucially, political will measured in money.

The city invested the equivalent of Rs 15,000 crore every year for nearly 10 years, pouring resources into public transport expansion, industrial compliance, coal-plant retrofitting, dust control, and real-time monitoring systems.

If Delhi is to break its pollution cycle, it too must move away from seasonal, reactionary measures, and embrace genuine systems thinking.

Air pollution is not produced by a single source, nor can it be solved by piecemeal interventions. It is the cumulative outcome of how a city moves, builds, consumes energy, manages industry, and enforces rules. Any meaningful solution, therefore, must be coordinated across sectors and states, treating the NCR as one interconnected airsheds rather than a cluster of isolated jurisdictions.

Where to Spend: Funding to Build a Structural Clean-Air Plan

• A central pillar of this long-term approach is transforming mobility through an NCR-wide public transport system.

Several studies show that a clean-air future is impossible without a modern, integrated, affordable metro-bus network linking Delhi with Gurugram, Noida, Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Sonipat, Bahadurgarh, and surrounding regions.

Such a system must be dense and reliable, backed by strong first-mile and last-mile connectivity through feeder buses, e-rickshaws, cycling lanes, and walkable streets.

Without a dramatic reduction in vehicular emissions, any gains made in other sectors will be quickly erased.

• Equally important is enforcing clean energy in the thermal power ring that surrounds Delhi within a 300-kilometre radius.

Several coal-fired plants in this belt remain non-compliant with FGD (Flue Gas Desulphurisation) norms for sulphur dioxide, despite having had years to meet the standards.

Ensuring compliance is not a technological challenge; it is an enforcement challenge, and one that demands immediate, uncompromising action.

• Industrial emissions form another critical front.

Polluting industries cannot simply be relocated from one area to another, shifting the problem rather than solving it.

Industries that refuse to meet emission norms, install scrubbers, transition to cleaner fuels, or follow pollution-control protocols must face penalties and, where necessary, closure. Compliance must be continuous, transparent, and monitored in real time.

• Dust and construction debris, which account for nearly 30 percent of Delhi’s PM10 load, require equally aggressive attention.

Effective measures include mandatory dust screens and enclosures at construction sites, widespread mechanised road sweeping, strict enforcement of C&D waste management rules, and heavy penalties for illegal dumping.

All of the above need robust annual budget, at least for a decade. And to make sure the funds are spent and spent well, we need an equally robust and decentralised governance model.

Delhi’s current air pollution governance model is fundamentally broken because it is top-heavy, centralised, and disconnected from the ground realities it is meant to manage.

Delhi’s Air Needs Ground-Level Enforcement, Not Another Super-Authority

Bodies like the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM), envisioned as high-level authorities to coordinate across states, have instead hardened into bureaucratic fortresses, issuing advisories, convening meetings, and publishing action plans that rarely translate into real enforcement.

As I say it harshly, at best the CAQM is a GRAP broadcasting authority and nothing more. It faces a credibility crisis.

Long-term air-quality management does not require a super-authority issuing seasonal diktats; it requires strategic, science-based guidance backed by continuous, everyday implementation on the ground.

And, therefore, real change in governance style requires a bottom-heavy governance system, where capacity, staffing, and decision-making authority rest with those who actually implement solutions.

State pollution control boards, pollution control committees, municipal agencies, and local enforcement teams need resources, training, and autonomy.

I do not mean to revive 'Inspector Raj', but to empower the people who monitor emissions, inspect industries, enforce construction rules, track compliance, and respond to violations.

Today, many of these institutions function with up to 50 percent vacancies, crippling their ability to carry out even basic tasks like inspections, sample collection, and reporting.

Filling these vacancies, expanding field staff, strengthening training, and ensuring operational budgets would do far more for Delhi’s air than yet another committee report drafted in Lutyens’ Delhi.

The RTI reply makes one thing absolutely clear—unless Delhi is prepared to invest real money, build real capacity, enforce real laws, and empower real institutions, the city will remain trapped in its fifth season, one of its own making.

Because Delhi is running out of air far faster than it is running out of excuses.

(Vimlendu Jha is an environmental activist who currently heads Swechha, a Delhi-based youth and environment organisation. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)