Delhi’s air
Every reading against its published limit. Every gap named.
Year round
Live — the source publishes hourly; the observation time is printed below
241
AQI · 24-hour · worst of 44 monitors
Poor
AQI 100 is PM10’s 24-hour standard, 100 µg/m³. Over it.
This is the WORST of 44 CPCB monitors across Delhi — IIT Delhi. Averaged across all 44, Delhi reads 169 — an average across stations is how CPCB makes the city figure it publishes. Hourly. Observed 08:00 IST, 3 October 2026. How this number is made.
India, right now
259 cities report to CPCB. Delhi is ranked 4 of them, and that changes between hours.
134 of 259 above the limit India set for itself. 22 read “Good”. Mandideep reports from one station and Delhi from 44 — a city with one monitor is measured less, not better.
One snapshot, one hour. The eight cities above and Delhi’s row beside them come from one national reading taken at 08:00 IST, 3 October 2026, which is what makes them comparable with each other — and why the order is an hour’s reading rather than a standing claim: by the time you read it, CPCB has published another. It is the same hour as the reading at the top of this page.
Who is in it?
Four figures about people, three of them models, and each says what it is measured against.
Counted or measuredModelled
16.6
million deaths, 2009–2019
measured against the WHO guideline — 5 µg/m³ annual; about 1.5 million a year, 24.9% of all mortality. Jaganathan and others, Lancet Planetary Health, December 2024.
3.8
million deaths, 2009–2019
measured against India’s own standard — 40 µg/m³ annual; 5.0% of all mortality. Same study, same years.
India’s annual standard is eight times the WHO guideline, so the same air counts as 3.8 million deaths against one and 16.6 million against the other.
29.4%
of Delhi schoolchildren aged 13–14 and 16–17 showed airflow obstruction on spirometry — 3,157 students in private schools. Counted
Its strongest association was body weight, not air pollution: 39.8% of the Delhi children were overweight or obese, against 16.4% in Kottayam and Mysore. Salvi and others, Lung India, September 2021.
8.2 years
of life expectancy an average resident of the NCT of Delhi could gain if particulates met the WHO guideline. 3.5 years across India. Modelled
A counterfactual for the average resident, not a forecast for any person, from satellite-based 2023 estimates. Across South Asia’s most polluted countries it is nearly twice the toll of childhood and maternal malnutrition. Air Quality Life Index, EPIC, University of Chicago, 2025 update.
Three of those four figures are models. The one that was counted is the one about children’s lungs, because somebody put real adolescents in front of a spirometer. A model is not a lesser thing than a count, but it is a different thing, and a dashboard that sets them at the same weight is telling you they are the same.
How the number is made
One number stands in for eight, and it is not their average — it is the worst of them.
AQI
One number for eight poisons
Up to eight pollutants folded into one 0–500 figure that reports whichever is worst at a monitor. It is an index, not a concentration. The number at the top of this page is the worst monitor, 241; CPCB’s own city figure averages the monitors instead. Neither is a measure of what any one person breathes.
PM2.5
Small enough to enter blood
Particles under two and a half microns reach the deepest part of the lung, and the finest cross into the blood. About 98 µg/m³ at IHBAS, the highest of the Delhi monitors reporting it in the hour above, implied by its sub-index. India’s 24-hour standard is 60 µg/m³.
PM10
Dust you can feel
Coarser particles from roads, construction and soil, stopping mostly in the upper airway. About 291 µg/m³ at IIT Delhi, the highest of the Delhi monitors reporting it in the hour above, implied by its sub-index. India’s 24-hour standard is 100 µg/m³.
“The worst sub-index determines the overall AQI.” CPCB, About National Air Quality Index.
PM10
241
~291 of 100 µg/m³
governing
PM2.5
111
~63.9 of 60 µg/m³
CO
48
~1 of 2 mg/m³
NO₂
38
~30.4 of 80 µg/m³
O₃
11
~11 of 100 µg/m³
Eight pollutants, 5 at this monitor. SO₂, NH₃ and Pb are not reported here. The big numbers are CPCB’s own sub-indexes, published as such; the small ones under them are the concentrations those sub-indexes imply, carrying a tilde because this feed publishes no concentration at all.
AQI 100 is not a rule of thumb. CPCB put every pollutant’s 100 exactly on India’s own standard — PM2.5 60 µg/m³ and PM10 100 µg/m³ over 24 hours, ozone and CO over eight. Above 100, that pollutant is over the standard at that monitor. Whether the standard is breached is a judgement across days: the notification lets 24-hour values exceed it on 2% of days in a year, never on two days running. One hour can show the air over the line; on its own, it cannot show the standard broken. NAAQS 2009, Gazette of India, 18 November 2009.
| Figure | Kind | Source | Cadence |
|---|---|---|---|
| AQI, 241 | Read, then selected | CPCB’s published sub-indexes; worst of 44 monitors (IIT Delhi, Delhi - IITM). CPCB’s own city mean is 169. | Hourly |
| Concentrations, with a tilde | Calculated | Implied from CPCB’s sub-indexes through its own breakpoint table; CPCB’s feed carries no concentrations | Hourly |
| AQI 100 | Standard | CPCB National Air Quality Index, 2014 — set at each pollutant’s CPCB, NAAQS 2009 short-term standard | Fixed |
| Source split | Modelled | published apportionment study | Per study |
| Farm-fire detections | Observed by satellite | NASA FIRMS, per sensor | As dated on the figure |
| Attention | Counted | Wikipedia pageviews | Monthly, as dated |
| Forecast | Forecast | WAQI’s model, on the US EPA index scale — not CPCB’s, not an observation | As dated |
CPCB’s own sub-indexes, never recomputed. The feed publishes each pollutant’s index at each station; the number at the top of this page is the worst of them at the worst monitor, read as published. Only the concentrations are calculated, and they carry a tilde.
The rules that apply
India’s standards, the WHO’s guidelines, and the emergency schedule that switches Delhi-NCR down. One of the three is law, one is advice, and one is a decision somebody has to take.
India’s PM2.5 standard is 8 times the WHO’s guideline over a year, and 4 times over a day. The two are not the same kind of thing. India’s is law, notified under the Air Act; the WHO’s is the level its review of the health evidence recommends, and binds no one in India. A multiplier here is honest because both sides are concentrations in the same unit over the same window — which is exactly what an AQI is not.
| Pollutant | Window | India, NAAQS 2009 | WHO | India against WHO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PM2.5µg/m³ | Annual | 40 | 5 | 8× |
| PM2.5µg/m³ | 24-hour | 60 | 15 | 4× |
| PM10µg/m³ | Annual | 60 | 15 | 4× |
| PM10µg/m³ | 24-hour | 100 | 45 | 2.2× |
| NO₂µg/m³ | Annual | 40 | 10 | 4× |
| NO₂µg/m³ | 24-hour | 80 | 25 | 3.2× |
| NO₂µg/m³ | 1-hour | none set | 200† | |
| SO₂µg/m³ | Annual | 50 | not in the 2021 guideline | |
| SO₂µg/m³ | 24-hour | 80 | 40 | 2× |
| O₃µg/m³ | 8-hour | 100 | 100 | |
| O₃µg/m³ | 1-hour | 180 | not in the 2021 guideline | |
| O₃µg/m³ | Peak season | none set | 60 | |
| COmg/m³ | 8-hour | 2 | 10† | India stricter |
| COmg/m³ | 1-hour | 4 | 35† | India stricter |
| COmg/m³ | 24-hour | none set | 4 | |
| NH₃µg/m³ | Annual | 100 | not in the 2021 guideline | |
| NH₃µg/m³ | 24-hour | 400 | not in the 2021 guideline | |
| Pbµg/m³ | Annual | 0.5 | not in the 2021 guideline | |
| Pbµg/m³ | 24-hour | 1 | not in the 2021 guideline |
Two windows are never compared. A 24-hour reading is set against a 24-hour standard, an 8-hour against an 8-hour; where only one body sets a figure for a window the other cell says so. India’s short-term standards must be met on 98% of days in a year and never missed two days running; the WHO’s short-term levels are the 99th percentile of the year, three or four days over. † A WHO guideline set before 2021 that the 2021 update did not re-evaluate and says remains valid. NAAQS 2009, the notification · WHO guidelines, 2021.
GRAP is the schedule of what Delhi-NCR shuts down, and at what number. Four stages, keyed to Delhi’s average AQI — never to one monitor. A stage is in force only when the Commission for Air Quality Management’s GRAP sub-committee orders it, and it has ordered stages ahead of a forecast before the average got there. So the threshold says when it may act, not that it has.
| Stage | Air quality | Delhi AQI | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stage I | Poor | 201–300 | PIB |
| Stage II | Very Poor | 301–400 | PIB |
| Stage III | Severe | 401–450 | PIB |
| Stage IV | Severe+ | above 450 | PIB |
A comparison, not a status. In the hour at the top of this page the average of Delhi’s 44 monitors was 169 — below where Stage I begins, 201. The stages are judged on CPCB’s daily city figure, not on one hour, and only an order puts one in force.
Schedule as revised by CAQM on 21 November 2025. It says the stages are to be invoked in advance, on IMD and IITM forecasts, and at once if the observed AQI crosses a threshold the forecast missed. The measures under each stage are amended without a version number, so they are not copied here: CAQM’s schedule · what each stage does, and how to read a GRAP headline.
Where does it come from?
A source apportionment is a model. One kind works backwards from what the filters caught; the other works forwards from an emissions inventory and the weather. Either way it is a plausible split, not a measurement — and it changes with the season.
Modelled, not measured
This is the split the Government of India commissioned for Delhi, and its newest measurement is from February 2017. Six sectors, summing to a hundred — a seasonal average, not a reading of any one day.
Dust goes from 17% to 38% in summer; industry from 30% to 22%. The season does not just change how much there is — it changes what it is. A control measure aimed at the winter split is aimed at a different problem in June.
TERI-ARAI, August 2018 — PM2.5, Delhi, dispersion model (WRF–CMAQ), monitoring April 2016 to February 2017. Commissioned by the Department of Heavy Industry, Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises. The report, Table E.2, page E13, executive summary.
Four things the study says about itself. Agricultural burning at 4% is a floor, not an estimate — the monitoring never covered October, when burning peaks, and the report says so in as many words. The shares are averaged across the whole period, so they cannot describe a bad day. The model reproduces only 82–87% of the mass actually measured. And “industry” includes biomass burned as industrial fuel, which the report itself calls an overestimate.
Modelled, not measured
The other government study will not give you a single number. IIT Kanpur sampled six sites across Delhi and reported every source as a range, because the answer was different under every monitor. The width of each line below is how much the six sites fail to agree.
Vehicles are somewhere between 6% and 29%. That is the range in which every argument about Delhi’s cars, buses and trucks is actually being conducted. TERI-ARAI puts transport at 17–28% and says plainly that its figure is higher than IIT Kanpur’s because it counted secondary particles alongside primary ones — the two studies are not quite measuring the same thing.
IIT Kanpur, January 2016 — PM2.5, receptor modelling (chemical mass balance) at six Delhi sites, monitoring Winter 2013-14 and summer 2014. Commissioned by the Government of NCT of Delhi, and the Delhi Pollution Control Committee. The report, Section 4.6, 'Overall Summary and Source Apportionment at a Glance', page 241.
And the categories do not line up. IIT Kanpur’s “coal and flyash” is a fuel signature; TERI-ARAI’s “industry” is a sector that bundles power plants, brick kilns and stone crushers. They are not two estimates of one quantity. They do not average, and neither is a measurement of today’s reading.
Modelled, not measured
Inside the 28% that transport contributes, cars are 3.4. Trucks are more than twice that and two-wheelers twice that. Winter PM2.5, Delhi.
Of the car share, diesel is 67–74% and the oldest cars dominate — BS-II and earlier account for 31–50% of it. Run the study’s own arithmetic and every BS-IV diesel car in Delhi comes to about 0.5–0.9% of PM2.5. That is not an argument for more cars. It is an argument about where a policy rupee buys the most air, and the answer in this table is trucks, brick kilns and generators, not hatchbacks.
Also inside the totals: within industry’s 30%, brick kilns 8%, power stations 6%, stone crushers 2%, and 14% from other industries burning coal, biomass, pet-coke and furnace oil. Within “others”, diesel generators 5% and refuse burning 3%. And within dust’s 17%, road dust is 4 and construction 1 — the report attributes much of the remainder to dust that did not originate in Delhi at all. TERI-ARAI, section E7.3.
The question neither study answers. What is in the air today. Both are seasonal averages, and the newer of the two last measured anything in February 2017. There is a system that does answer it — Decision Support System (DSS), run by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, which publishes a daily split across 29 sectors with the stubble share taken from the previous evening’s satellite fire counts.
0
MODIS · 1 km
5 days to 22 August 2026
24
VIIRS · 375 m
MODIS saw none, same fires
The disagreement is itself a measurement. Out of season MODIS resolves none of them at all. At peak — 2025-11-05 +5d — 1,170 against 2,222, only 1.9:1. MODIS misses almost everything when fires are small and catches most of it when they are large, so the gap measures fire size, not instrument error.
A detection is a thermal anomaly, not a confirmed crop fire. The two VIIRS satellites see the same fires at different overpass times and must not be added.
MODIS, five days from 5 November each year, same region. A fixed five-day window is a sample, not a season total — burning dates shift with monsoon withdrawal and harvest timing, so a fixed window can miss a peak. 2024 and 2025 run at roughly a sixth of 2021.
Where it has been, and where it is going
The government’s annual figures go back to 2018; this page’s own hourly record starts on 25 August 2026; the forecast reaches seven days ahead.
Official data · CAQM
PM2.5 114 µg/m³ in 2018, 97 in 2025. On the Commission for Air Quality Management’s own figures 2025 was the lowest of these years bar 2020, and still 2.4 times India’s annual standard of 40 — a concentration against a concentration, over a year against a year’s standard. PM10 moved from 242 to 198.
Eight numbers is a direction, not a trend line, and the release does not say which monitors were averaged. * 2020: COVID year. CAQM via PIB, 02-01-2026 — “Comparative daily average values (till 31st December 2025)”.
One square a day. The record begins on 25 August 2026. It draws no square it does not have — an empty cell is absence, not zero. There is no retrospective series: the CPCB feed publishes the latest hour only.
Attention is not air. The Wikipedia article was read 39,084 times in its busiest month, November 2023, and 3,633 in its quietest, July 2024 — a 10.8× swing. November against the summer, year by year, it is widening: 2022 4.7×, 2023 5.6×, 2024 7.2×, 2025 8×.
Wikipedia pageviews, 55 complete months. It measures what people seek, not what outlets publish. A quiet month is not a clean month. The current month is incomplete and excluded, never plotted.
WAQI’s PM2.5 forecast, daily mean, 1 days — on the US EPA index scale, not in µg/m³ and not CPCB’s AQI. A forecast, not an observation.
Modelled, not measured
Somebody is forecasting this, and it is not us. The curve is WAQI’s own model. The government’s is the Air Quality Early Warning System run by IITM and IMD — the forecast GRAP stages can be invoked on, and where SAFAR’s own site now sends readers. Where the two disagree, neither is an observation.
Which part of the city, and where the city sits
There are 44 monitors reporting for Delhi and they do not agree with each other. Every figure in this band was read at 08:00 IST, 3 October 2026 — one hour, all 44 stations together, which is what makes them comparable — and the same hour as the reading at the top of the page, which is read from this band's worst station.
Above the limitWithin it
241 and 128, 2.3 km apart. One city, one hour, one poor and one inside the limit. Your air is your nearest monitor’s.
44 monitors, true positions; the 40 × 39 km frame is their coverage, not Delhi. Median gap 2.7 km — but you can stand 14.8 km from one.
… 36 more …
44 stations, 43 above the limit. The quietest reads 90, the loudest 241 — one city, one hour, 90 to 241. A city average hides it. Red is above the limit.
23 of 31 NCR towns above AQI 100 at their worst monitor, read together at 08:00 IST, 3 October 2026. The mean of each town’s monitors is beside it, and so is how many there are — a town with one monitor is a single reading wearing a town’s name.
| Town | Worst monitor | Mean | Monitors |
|---|---|---|---|
| GurugramHaryana | 315PM2.5 · Vikas Sadan | 198 | 4 |
| GhaziabadUttar Pradesh | 291PM2.5 · Wave City | 215 | 6 |
| MeerutUttar Pradesh | 262PM2.5 · MIET College | 187 | 4 |
| DelhiNCT of Delhi, Delhi | 241PM10 · IIT Delhi | 169 | 44 |
| NoidaGautam Budh Nagar, Uttar Pradesh | 222O₃ · Sector - 62 | 214 | 4 |
| BhiwadiAlwar, Rajasthan | 216PM10 · Vasundhara Nagar_UIT | 188 | 2 |
| ManesarGurugram, Haryana | 189PM2.5 · Sector-2 IMT | 189 | 1 |
| BulandshahrUttar Pradesh | 188PM10 · Yamunapuram | 188 | 1 |
| JindHaryana | 187PM2.5 · Police Lines | 187 | 1 |
| ShamliUttar Pradesh | 177PM2.5 · New Tehsil | 177 | 1 |
| FaridabadHaryana | 176PM10 · New Industrial Town | 138 | 2 |
| BahadurgarhJhajjar, Haryana | 174PM10 · Arya Nagar | 174 | 1 |
| MuzaffarnagarUttar Pradesh | 166PM10 · New Mandi | 166 | 1 |
| BaghpatUttar Pradesh | 165PM10 · Sardar Patel Inter College | 165 | 1 |
| ModinagarGhaziabad, Uttar Pradesh | 164PM2.5 · SRM University | 164 | 1 |
| KhoraGhaziabad, Uttar Pradesh | 161PM2.5 · Prashant Garden | 161 | 1 |
| KhurjaBulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh | 161PM10 · Kalindi Kunj | 161 | 1 |
| BarautBaghpat, Uttar Pradesh | 144PM10 · Nagar Palika Parishad | 144 | 1 |
| NarnaulMahendragarh, Haryana | 139PM10 · Shastri Nagar | 139 | 1 |
| Greater NoidaGautam Budh Nagar, Uttar Pradesh | 127PM10 · Knowledge Park - V | 106 | 2 |
| Charkhi DadriHaryana | 126PM2.5 · Mini Secretariat | 126 | 1 |
| DharuheraRewari, Haryana | 125PM2.5 · Municipal Corporation Office | 125 | 1 |
| BhiwaniHaryana | 118PM10 · H.B. Colony | 118 | 1 |
| BallabgarhFaridabad, Haryana | 89PM2.5 · Nathu Colony | 89 | 1 |
| SonipatSonepat, Haryana | 89PM2.5 · Murthal | 89 | 1 |
| AlwarRajasthan | 80PM2.5 · Moti Doongri | 68 | 2 |
| PalwalHaryana | 79PM10 · Shyam Nagar | 79 | 1 |
| RohtakHaryana | 76PM10 · MD University | 76 | 1 |
| KarnalHaryana | 50PM10 · Sector-12 | 50 | 1 |
| MandikheraNuh, Haryana | 49PM10 · General Hospital | 49 | 1 |
| PanchgaonGurugram, Haryana | 30O₃ · Amity University | 30 | 1 |
No CPCB monitor reported this hour from Panipat, Hapur or Bharatpur — unmeasured, not clean. NCR is 25 districts as the NCR Planning Board lists them. A town’s figure is its monitors, not every street in it; a ? marks a gas channel its own station does not back up, published but not ranked.
Delhi is 4th of 259 cities. Around it, 23 of the 31 NCR towns CPCB measured in the same hour read above AQI 100 at their worst monitor — the Delhi-NCR tab beside this one has every one. Air does not stop at the city limit, and neither does the question.
134 of 259 cities are above the limit India set for itself, and 22 are “Good” — the country is not uniformly polluted, which is what makes the cluster around Delhi legible. Read from 487 stations on CPCB’s scale. A stuck channel is dropped, and a gas channel its own station’s particulates do not back up is published but not ranked.
Where the 134 sit — 22 of 31 states and union territories
Counts, never averages: CPCB measures cities, not states, so the unmeasured part of a state is unmeasured rather than clean. “3 of 3” and “3 of 40” are not the same finding, which is why the number of cities in the feed is on every row. The other 9 states have no city above the limit this hour.
The cost of inaction is more than the action
Released is the promise. Spent is the record. Both are dwarfed by the damage — and the two spending figures are the government’s own.
The damage, each year
₹7 lakh crore
about $95 billion, roughly 3% of GDP — the report’s own comparisons are 50% of all tax collected annually, and 150% of India’s health budget. Dalberg with Clean Air Fund and CII, 2021.
Released for it since 2019
₹13,415 crore
NCAP and the 15th Finance Commission air-quality grants, cumulative.
Actually spent
₹9,929 crore
74% of what was released. The 82 NCAP cities used ₹831 crore of ₹1,615 crore — 51%.
One year of damage costs about fifty times everything released for it since 2019, and about seventy times what has been spent. Both periods are stated because the comparison only holds if they are: the damage figure is annual, the spending figures are cumulative.
What this is not. It is not a cost-benefit study: nobody has published a costed abatement plan for Delhi-NCR, so what fixing the air would cost is not a published figure. This is the narrower claim, and the only one the figures support — what the damage costs each year, beside what has actually been released and spent against it. Sources: PIB releases, CPCB’s PRANA funding guidelines, CREA’s Tracing the Hazy Air, Dalberg with Clean Air Fund and CII.
Questions, answered
Each answer stands on its own, and every figure in it is read off this page’s own data, at the hour it was observed.
What is Delhi’s AQI right now?
At 08:00 IST, 3 October 2026, the worst of Delhi’s 44 CPCB monitors, IIT Delhi, read AQI 241 (Poor), set by PM10. The average of all 44 was 169. CPCB publishes hourly; the time is part of the answer, and a reading hours old is not the air now.
Is that above India’s air quality standard?
CPCB set AQI 100 for each pollutant at India’s own short-term standard, so above 100 means that pollutant’s rolling average at that monitor is over the standard’s level. It is not, on its own, a breach: the 2009 standards let 24-hour values exceed on 2% of days in a year, never two days running. The AQI band names carry no legal force.
What is the difference between the AQI and PM2.5?
PM2.5 is a concentration — micrograms of particles smaller than 2.5 microns in a cubic metre of air. The AQI is an index: each pollutant’s concentration is converted to a 0–500 sub-index and the station reports the worst one. An AQI of 200 is not twice the pollution of 100; the scale is piecewise, so only a concentration can be multiplied.
How do India’s standards compare with the WHO’s?
For PM2.5, India’s standard is 40 µg/m³ over a year and 60 over 24 hours (NAAQS 2009); the WHO’s 2021 guideline is 5 and 15 — 8 and 4 times lower. India’s standards are law under the Air Act; the WHO’s guideline is a health-based recommendation with no legal force in India.
Is GRAP in force in Delhi?
GRAP’s four stages begin at Delhi AQI 201, 301, 401 and above 450 (CAQM, revised 21 November 2025). A stage is in force only when CAQM’s GRAP sub-committee orders it, sometimes ahead of a forecast, so a number crossing a threshold does not by itself put one in force. This page states the schedule, not the status; CAQM’s own orders do that.
What causes Delhi’s air pollution?
No single split describes every day. The two government-commissioned studies disagree: TERI-ARAI (2018) put transport at 28% of winter PM2.5 in Delhi, while IIT Kanpur (2016) gave vehicles a range of 6–29% across six sites. Both are seasonal averages that cannot describe a bad day; weather decides how much of what is emitted stays over the city.
How does Delhi compare with other Indian cities?
In CPCB’s national snapshot at 08:00 IST, 3 October 2026, Delhi ranked 4th of 259 cities on its worst monitor. Mumbai 133 (mean 89, 20 monitors); Kolkata 180 (mean 116, 7 monitors); Bengaluru 125 (mean 89, 7 monitors); Chennai 108 (mean 87, 6 monitors); Hyderabad 127 (mean 72, 13 monitors). A city ranked on its worst monitor ranks higher the more monitors it has, which is why the mean and the count sit beside every figure.
Is Delhi’s air getting better?
On the Commission for Air Quality Management’s own figures, Delhi’s annual average PM2.5 was 114 µg/m³ in 2018 and 97 in 2025, the lowest of those years apart from COVID-hit 2020 — and still 2.4 times India’s annual standard of 40. Eight annual figures show a direction, not a settled trend, and the release does not say which monitors were averaged.
What does this page not know?
What is in the air at your street — a monitor measures its own location, and in the hour above two monitors 2.3 km apart disagreed by 113 points. Your exposure, which depends on where you spend the day. Which source caused today’s reading; the studies above are seasonal averages. Whether a satellite fire detection was a crop fire. And what tomorrow brings: a forecast is a model, not an observation.
What you can do
Nobody visits a record every morning. This is the part that asks something of you.
Watch your monitor
One message when your monitor’s band changes for the worse. Not every hour it sits over the line — an alert every hour is not an alert. Nothing else, ever, and no address is shared with anybody.
Find the monitor nearest you
Loading the 44 monitors…
Your monitor
Where to write
Why it asks for a monitor and not a pin code. India Post’s own All India Pincode Directory publishes 562 post offices for Delhi and no latitude or longitude column at all, so there is no official way to turn a Delhi pin code into a point on the ground. A monitor is the better question anyway: two of them 2.3 km apart read 241 and 128.
The campaign
Delhi I Can’t See You is Swechha’s campaign on this. This page is the why; the campaign is the what.
Five more situations
Yamuna · Heat · Forest fire · Forest loss · Climate event
Build a monitor, and then distrust it
A classroom-grade PM sensor costs a few thousand rupees — an optical particle counter, a microcontroller, a power supply. It will give you a PM2.5 number within minutes of switching on. That number means nothing yet.
Low-cost optical sensors read high in humidity and drift as their chamber fouls. To turn a reading into a measurement you co-locate it beside a reference station for a fortnight and fit your device against theirs. That is the whole difference between the 44 instruments on this page and a gadget on a windowsill.
File a complaint that lands somewhere
Open burning, a construction site without sheeting, a generator running in a residential block, a road left unswept — each is already prohibited under rules somebody is meant to enforce.
Sameer, CPCB’s own app, publishes the same station data this page reads and takes a geotagged photograph as a complaint. Green Delhi, the Delhi government’s app, routes the same thing to the responsible department with a trackable number. Neither is Swechha’s and neither is endorsed — they are named because a complaint with a reference number is harder to lose than a complaint without one.
Read the objection window
Environmental clearances carry a public-consultation stage with a fixed window for written objections. Most close unopposed because nobody was watching.
Most recent order, as reported
Delhi-NCR Pollution: CAQM Announces Phased Ban On New Petrol, Diesel, CNG Light Goods Vehicles
ETV Bharat · Thu, 20 Aug 2026.
100 items from 45 publishers, via Google News. Reporting is tagged as reporting. Never presented as Swechha’s finding. A headline is evidence that something was said, not that it is true.
A gap is a gap
An empty day stays empty — a gap in the record is a gap in the record, never a zero.
Cite this page
Reuse freely — CC BY 4.0. Every figure carries its source and its cadence in how the number is made. If you quote a number from here, quote the kind with it. Each upstream source keeps its own terms.
This is what we are doing.
It is not enough.
The work against this reading
One campaign with a name on it, and a slower thing underneath. Delhi I Can’t See You is the public push; air is also a module in the schools curriculum, and the CityScapes walks take people to the places these readings are taken.
And why it is not a reply
A campaign changes what a city is willing to say about its air; it does not change what the city burns. The reading at the top of this page is the honest measure of that distance, which is why it is printed before any of this.
Understand the data
- What is Delhi's AQI?One number from eight pollutants, and why it is a worst case rather than an average.
- What is PM2.5?Particles small enough to cross from lung into blood, and the standard India sets for them.
- Why is Delhi's air so bad?Geography, season and a regional airshed — and the part of the answer nobody has settled.
In the Journal
Every dated piece, written against the readings on this page.