Environment › Pollution
Air pollution
Air pollution and its control: the national programme and standards, how air quality is measured and ranked, and its sources, from vehicles and power plants to crop burning, dust and indoor fuel. Prelims has asked which gases are used to calculate the Air Quality Index and about the World Health Organization (WHO) air quality guidelines.
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2022: the WHO Air Quality Guidelines
Showing 1 of 5 subjects, those that changed from 16 to 31 July 2026.Show all
National Clean Air Programme
Copy link to National Clean Air ProgrammePrelims and Mains
The National Clean Air Programme set 130 cities a target for one pollutant and paid them to meet it. Seven years on, most of those cities have cleaner air than they started with and very few of them have clean air.
- The National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) was launched in 2019 and covers 130 cities, most of them non-attainment cities.
- It aims to cut PM10 by up to 40 per cent by 2025–26, measured against 2017–18.
- Cities are paid through performance linked grants, tracked on the Portal for Regulation of Air Pollution in Non-Attainment cities (PRANA).
- Against 2017–18, 108 of the 130 cities had lower annual PM10, 26 cut it by more than 40 per cent, and 14 met the standards.
- Of ₹16,423.55 crore in grants since 2019–20, 70.5 per cent has been used.
- The results were released on Swachh Vayu Diwas, the International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies.
What changed
7 Sep 2026
7 Sep 2026
- Swachh Vayu Survekshan, begun in 2022–23, ranks NCAP cities in three population groups on what they do about dust, waste burning, vehicles and industry.
- It rewards effort over results: measured PM10 improvement carries only 2.5 per cent of the weightage.
- In the 2026 rankings Lucknow topped the largest cities although its PM10 is more than twice the national standard.
23 Jul 2026Update
- On the finer fraction, 65 of the 130 programme cities met the PM2.5 standard of 40 µg/m³ in 2025 to 26. Among large cities Surat, Mumbai and Hyderabad were within it, while Delhi stood at 102 µg/m³.