Air pollution

Prelims 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.

Prelims and Mains

Stubble burning is a modest share of the season's particulate pollution and a large share of it on the worst days, so how the fires are counted decides how the argument runs. The satellites that count them are now missing them, because the burning has moved into the evening.

• Farm fires add no more than 15 per cent of winter particulate pollution, but more than a third on some October and November days.
• CAQM opened talks with Punjab and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on how stubble burning is counted, doubting that fire counts capture it.
• Peak burning moved from about 1.30 pm in 2020 to about 5 pm in 2024, after the satellites have passed.
• Fire counts in Punjab and Haryana fell 93 and 91 per cent from 2021 to 2025, but burnt area fell far more slowly.
• The burnt area protocol is being re-tested as satellite and ground data diverge.

Background reading: The Indian Express, 7 Sep 2026: Air quality management body to re-test burnt area protocol as satellite, ground data diverge (opens in a new tab)