Ahead of Diwali, Delhi will watch the air-quality number again. One citywide reading can trigger action across the capital region. It cannot tell a parent whether the construction site next to a school was inspected, or a bus rider whether the promised extra services actually ran.
The Commission for Air Quality Management’s emergency plan classifies an index of 301 to 400 as very poor. Its first set of measures begins earlier, at 201 to 300, and includes road sweeping, dust controls at building sites and restrictions on burning waste. Those are ordinary municipal jobs. They should come with the same public accounting as the extraordinary orders that follow when conditions worsen.
Before each winter, the region’s authorities should publish one short weekly return: which sites were inspected and corrected, which waste-burning complaints were resolved, and where extra buses actually operated. The figures should show which authority is responsible on either side of Delhi’s borders. That would let residents test a promise against a street or bus route they know.
There are costs to shutting a site or curbing traffic. Contractors and workers need clear rules, and households need a practical alternative before a journey becomes harder. Weather, crop fires and pollution from several states complicate the picture, so no single agency can promise a clean day. Each agency can say what it did, where, and whether the problem returned. The next winter review should start with that record.
