'Death in the air': How is life in the world's most polluted city different? | Life

New Delhi, India – As toxic smog envelops India's capital New Delhi, Gola Noor pushes a wooden cart loaded with waste with her bare hands to help her coughing husband, Shahbaz, who is struggling to make a round of trade.

Under a dark sky, the couple, who are not yet 40 years old, leave at 6 am every day to pick waste in the affluent areas of Delhi. Shahbaz stops selling to take a long time, panting. “Death is in the air,” he said, spitting on the road. “The wind is bitter and the cough has not changed now.”

His wife, Noor, spent the last night in a nearby hospital because of “severe itching” in her watery eyes. But he returned to work the next morning with Shahbaz. “Starving to death sounds more horrible than slowly dying from gas,” he tells Shahbaz, motioning for her to continue selling. “If only we had a choice [to not get out of the home].”

For almost three weeks, the capital of India has been filled with deadly smog – in one evening, the Air Quality Index (AQI) increased to more than 1,700, more than 17 times the acceptable limit. The smoke contains “dangerous” levels of PM2.5, a particle measuring 2.5 microns or less in diameter, which can be carried into the lungs and cause fatal diseases and heart problems.

The region's chief minister called it a “health emergency”, schools were closed, and visibility on roads was reduced to 50 meters (164 feet). Yet the tragic story of New Delhi's winter is now a familiar legend, a deja vu for the city's residents.

As it has worsened during the last decade, the heavy fall of smog that lasts for many months in winter in a city of more than 30 million people translates into serious diseases of the nerves, heart and blood vessels, reduced lung capacity, or even cancer. It is also changing the way people live in the world's most polluted city, widening the social divide in an already deeply unequal society.

A 'grossly uneven' impact

Noor insists that no one outside New Delhi can understand what it means to “breathe death, with every breath”. Sitting among piles of garbage and flies, Noor separates different grades of plastic from other waste. He does not smell the smell of rotting food but is irritated by the smoke around him.

Two winters back, his 15-year-old daughter, Rukhsana, was struck by a “mysterious illness” that left her severely weakened and kept the family awake all night with coughing. Noor went 70,000 rupees ($830) in debt before Rukhsana was diagnosed with tuberculosis at a private hospital.

“He has recovered now, for God's sake, but every winter, the disease reappears,” Noor told Al Jazeera as he continued to sort the waste. Returning to their makeshift shack late at night doesn't help either.

“This village is dying because of the cars of wealthy people. But they will be saved because they have money; may they survive the COVID-19 lockdown,” said Shahbaz, looking at his wife. “Where should a poor person like me go?” When the pandemic hit, the Indian government suddenly put a lid on it, shutting down businesses resulting in the loss of more than 120 million jobs.

There are many reasons why New Delhi almost never has blue skies – from pollution from cars, smog from factories, and the burning of crops by farmers in neighboring states, to the burning of coal for widespread power generation.

Air pollution causes about 2.18 million deaths a year in India, second only to China, according to a study published by the British Medical Journal, and the University of Chicago's Air Quality Life Index notes that more than 510 million people live in northern India – about 40 people in India – are “on track” to lose 7.6 years of their life on average.

But among Indians, poor families are negatively impacted by pollution caused by others, found a 2021 study authored by Narasimha Rao, an associate professor at the Yale School of the Environment.

“It's not so much about their public health impact but about the equity issue,” Rao told Al Jazeera in an interview. “An analysis of how much people contribute to pollution, compared to how much they are exposed to, shows a very uneven situation.”

“There is a nexus of dirty rich people going on in Delhi,” added Rao. “The ability of rich people to deal with the pollution they cause is much better; they always know how to roll up the windows [of their cars]. But the vulnerability of a poor person to the same exposure is different.”

Every winter, local and national governments roll out measures — such as water sprinklers, blocking the entry of vehicles into cities — that “contain the situation” rather than address the causes of pollution, Rao said.

'Absolute phobia'

About a 40-minute drive from Noor's slum, Bhavreen Khandari lives in Defense Colony, an upscale neighborhood in the capital, with her two children. Khandari, an environmentalist and founder of Warrior Moms, a pan-India collective advocating for clean air for the next generation, laments the memories of what winter used to mean.

“Diwali,” he shouted happily. “Winter means the beginning of celebrations. It's time to go out and have fun with the family.”

But the dark sky “now means phobia, absolute phobia”.

During a routine communication in the group, Khandari says she learned shocking details from her fellow mothers – such as children waiting for a “filth season holiday”.

He says: “In five or six years, our children already know the name of antibiotics because they eat them every day. “A child who knows what a nebuliser is because the air is poisonous in our capital.”

“Getting up early in the morning and going; now, it kills. Going out to play was good; now that is killing our children,” he said.

On November 14, when India marked “Children's Day”, Khandari and her colleagues spent the afternoon protesting outside the office of JP Nadda, India's health minister, with a tray of cookies in their hands, reading “healthy air for all”.

“It was a really sad day,” Khandari told Al Jazeera, recalling the protest. “There was no response and the police stopped us.”

“Everything is wrong with government policy, from planning to enforcement,” he adds, angrily. “There is no political will, there is no intention. Only the reconstruction of the building can protect us.”

A nightmare

In the mid-1970s, Sheikh Ali's parents moved to New Delhi in search of a better life for their children. Five decades later, not much has changed; both died and Ali has been pulling rickshaws in Dilshad Garden area of ​​West Delhi for 22 years.

The 67-year-old suspect sleeps with 11 other family members in two rooms, which are converted into a restaurant during the day, next to open pipes. Ali doesn't remember anything about his village, somewhere in the south of Uttar Pradesh, but he vividly describes the vast farmland, where he ran endlessly with his friends.

Whenever the sky gets too hot and you can taste the ash, Ali says he tells his married children about his childhood. “The pollution has become worse in Delhi and the chest feels burning all the time,” said Ali, waiting to board a passenger. “There's no rest even inside the house – just a constant smell wherever I go.”

For the past two weeks, Ali's 11-month-old grandson has been coughing, sneezing and watery eyes. “Medication makes him feel happy for two days but then it starts again,” he said, adding that with the increase in pollution, the cost of living also increases.

Ali says that every time he looks at his grandson, he wants to leave New Delhi and go back to his hometown – even though he can no longer fathom what that life would look like.

Maybe, he says, if he can save enough money, he can consider returning to the village next winter. “Working in this hell and trying to save money in Delhi is as poisonous as breathing here,” he lamented.