With onset of winter, every year both India and China struggle with throat-searing air pollution blanketing their major cities.

But unfortunately, only one country has succeeded in tackling the problem. 

China has made strides in scrubbing the once-foul air that had become a fact of life each year in major cities like Beijing and industrial towns across the country.

Meanwhile, huge swaths of northern India continue to choke on clouds of polluted air, peaking during the winter period as temperatures drop, winds disappear and farmers across the region set their fields ablaze. 

Previously, it was China that dominated the list: In 2017, about three-quarters of IQAir’s tally of the world’s most polluted cities were in China, while 17 were in India.

India’s pollution crisis is conspicuously absent from its climate and environmental ambitions, both on the world stage and at home. It also remains far from the top of the agenda of a coming national election that observers widely expect will sweep Modi into a third term.

The pollution epidemic is a problem not just for the health of India’s 1.4 billion residents, the biggest population of any country in the world — but also for its economy, currently the fastest-growing of any major nation. A World Bank report published in June estimated that India’s annual increase in fine particle pollution shaves 0.56 percentage points off its annual GDP growth every year due to reduced worker productivity and capital formation.

Air pollution in India also reduces the productivity of a range of business assets — blocking sunlight from solar panels, degrading electronic circuitry and reducing crop yields, according to a 2021 report commissioned by the Clean Air Fund.

A decade ago, China was also confronted with crisis-level air pollution across its major cities, a consequence of breakneck growth and runaway emissions from a combination of vehicles, heavy industry and coal-fired power plants. The issue attracted international attention as the US Embassy in Beijing — one of the few reliable sources of air pollution data in the nation’s capital — broadcast regular crisis-level readings. It also translated into protests that bubbled across the country.