| Welcome to India, where the air is some of the world's most toxic, and gets even worse starting in October as cold weather sets in. Studies show the pollution is killing about a million or more people a year. All of our 1.4 billion people are exposed to unhealthy levels of ambient PM2.5, the most harmful pollutant, according to the World Bank Group. So it's a surprise that some two-thirds of families in New Delhi are largely planning on dealing with pollution without making major changes to their routine. About 62% of households in the capital — where pollution levels are routinely 20 times the World Health Organization's daily recommended limits — are planning to simply live with the problem without making major lifestyle changes, a survey of about 10,000 respondents by local advocacy group LocalCircles found. Only some 23% of those polled plan on buying an air purifier, while just 15% plan on traveling out of the city for some part of the next months. That lack of action is surprising considering not just the day to day discomfort of breathing bad air, but also the well-documented impact of prolonged exposure on cardiovascular and respiratory health, and even cancer. The air is only getting worse — New Delhi spent the weekend bathed in toxic smog, and its air quality index, or AQI, was well above authorities' top "severe plus" category. On Monday morning, Delhi had a PM2.5 reading of 690 micrograms per cubic meter of air, 46 times more than the WHO's recommended level of just 15 micrograms. The situation in the city is similar to what we once saw in China's capital Beijing, before the government began making strides against pollution more than a decade ago. There, policy measures included using natural gas in homes and restrictions on car and truck use, and city dwellers were encouraged to use bicycles. In India, the growing refusal to take more action to protect oneself against the air is a sign of deepening fatigue and apathy when it comes to pollution, which has been getting worse for years. Government measures like installing smog towers (effectively giant air purifiers) and anti-smog vehicles that spray mist have failed to create lasting relief. In recent days, New Delhi's government took steps to address the crisis, implementing traffic curbs and ordering schools to switch to online classes. "Sometimes when individuals are expected to do what societies should be doing, individuals learn to be helpless and start giving up," Dr. Achal Bhagat, a psychiatrist at Indraprastha Apollo Hospital in New Delhi, told me. Critics say Indian authorities have not spent enough to fix the problem, which is fueled by factory emissions, vehicular dust and household stove fires created by a population of more than 1.4 billion, along with a post-Covid construction boom. Most measures taken to curb the pollution crisis are reactionary and short-term, while some of the infrastructure that could reduce choking fumes and pollution — like public charging stations for EVs — remains somewhat sparse. As it gets ever harder to breathe, Indian citizens' growing apathy is the result of a chalta hai mindset, said Sachin Taparia, LocalCircles' founder, referring to the Hindi phrase that loosely translates to "anything goes." "Air is not a priority at a country level, state level, a local level," he told me. "The authorities have not taken it seriously and that applies to residents as well." —Satviki Sanjay | 
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