00:00Hello and welcome. You're watching this special edition on India Today with me, Shriya Chatterjee.
00:04I'm standing in the middle of this grey haze.
00:06This is that blanket that covers Delhi through day and night.
00:11This is that extra season of the year in India, the pollution season.
00:19If the rest of the world has four seasons, then India has one extra.
00:25The season when the country chokes in smog and is polluted.
00:30Every year as autumn sets in and the country prepares for annual festivities,
00:35the air quality across India and especially in the north starts to reach severe status.
00:43The national capital region and Delhi becomes the focal point where everyone chokes
00:49and the sky is no more blue but hazy, smoggy grey.
00:55Governments start putting in pollution curb policies in effect and the blame game starts.
01:02Delhi NCR blames Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh farmers for farm fires.
01:08Though heavily penalised, farmers continue to burn perali or the crop stubble to prepare farms for next cultivation.
01:16Punjab is blamed the maximum.
01:20Satellite data and ground reports show the rise in the number of farm fires.
01:25Till 2nd November, Punjab recorded 1612 farm fires.
01:30As the next season draws closer, small and marginal farmers say they are forced to burn stubble.
01:52And like every year, this blame game stretches beyond the borders to Pakistan as well.
01:57At the beginning of November, Pakistani Punjab province recorded 13,241 cases of stubble burning, making matters worse.
02:08The fire hotspots in Pakistan are concentrated in districts around Lahore.
02:13And the capital city of Pakistani Punjab province is shrouded in thick smog,
02:18reducing visibility and raising health concerns as air pollution reaches hazardous levels.
02:46And then, the Diwali festivities set in.
02:50Despite the court's direction to use only green crackers in Delhi NCR,
02:55the AQI in the capital city crosses all hazardous limits.
02:59On the night of Diwali, the whole of India gets blanketed in thick polluted smog.
03:06On 8th November, most air monitoring stations in Delhi hit a PM 2.5 reading of 500,
03:13the maximum on Central Pollution Control Board website.
03:17At ITO live streaming board on Diwali night, the PM 2.5 numbers inched closer to 1,000.
03:25Look at what this AQI monitoring station is clocking right now.
03:30This is Dwarka sector 8, PM 2.5 level above 1,500,
03:36the PM 10 level above 2,000.
03:40That is something which should scare all of us.
03:44On the ground, India Today Reality Check found serious gaps in pollution monitoring around the Diwali celebrations.
03:52Many of the stations did not record readings for several hours after midnight on 8th November.
04:15From the national capital to India's southern cities,
04:19The post-Diwali pollution story is looked all too familiar.
04:23According to open-source air quality monitoring platform AQI.in,
04:29while Delhi's AQI went up to 2,283 after Diwali,
04:34Chennai and Hyderabad also witnessed a sharp deterioration in air quality,
04:38with AQI levels crossing the 766 mark in several areas.
04:45International players participating in the Chennai Open Tennis Tournament
04:49raised objections and the tournament got postponed.
04:54Across the border, Lahore 2 was choking with severe polluted air.
04:59Today, the smoke is starting to start the smoke.
05:03The smoke is starting to start the smoke.
05:05When the children come to us, the children themselves complain
05:08that the smoke has been hard for us.
05:11Without the mask, they can't survive.
05:13My child is not in the school with a lot of work.
05:18The smoke was complaining about me.
05:33The Environment Protection Minister for Pakistan's Punjab province blamed Diwali firecrackers
05:39and pollution drifting from India for pushing Lahore's air quality index past hazardous levels.
05:45What remained common between the two countries despite the blame game?
05:50It's the extra season pollution marked by vehicle emissions, construction dust and smoke from
05:57crop waste burning.
05:58Bureau Report, India Today.
