The Chinese lesson to India: how can air pollution make or break your economy?

The extreme air pollution affecting India is shortening people’s life expectancy by almost six years

The country is now taking steps to address the issue, while trying not to compromise on economic growth

Reading Time:8 minutes

Published: 10:00am, 25 Apr 2024Updated: 3:03pm, 25 Apr 2024

Beijing and New Delhi have more in common than being two of the world’s most populated capital cities – extreme air pollution has blanketed both their skies.

While stories of air pollution in Delhi resemble “Beijing from 20 years ago” to climate policy expert Saurabh Jain-Punamiya, the Delhi problem has grown into a pan-India problem, with air pollution cutting almost six years off the life expectancy of the country’s residents.

In the past four years, financial hub Mumbai has seen “pollution at levels it has never seen in the last hundred years of its history”, according to Jain-Punamiya, former policy and research secretary to the minister of environment at India’s state government of Maharashtra from 2020 to 2022.

“The correlation between economic activity and pollution is very clear for all of us to see,” he said, but he asserted that setting aside pollution to achieve GDP growth is “unacceptable”.

Jain-Punamiya said India has the potential to break the link between GDP growth and pollution and emissions trends.

“The growth or infrastructure upgrade India is getting today is what China got in the early 2000s,” he said, however there is a “very encouraging” growth in the use of solar power and electric vehicles.

“We’re doing it at a speed no other country has done, except China,” he said.

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x