Tackling India’s Air Pollution Crisis

Grand Tamasha

Anyone who has even casually glanced at the news over the past several weeks would be hard pressed to miss the plethora of headlines about north India’s air pollution crisis. Every year as late Fall rolls around, air pollution across north India—including in the nation’s capital of Delhi—climbs to levels that make life almost unlivable for hundreds of millions of residents.

As bad as the crisis is, the situation is not helpless. Milan’s guest on the show this week, the economist Anant Sudarshan, has spent years trying to evaluate solutions to what seems like an intractable problem. Anant is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick and a Senior Fellow at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC).

Milan and Anant discuss the contours of India’s air pollution crisis, the country’s environmental data challenge, and the efficacy of Delhi’s controversial “odd-even” scheme. Plus, the two discuss strategies for managing industrial pollution, the potential of Indian emissions markets, and whether voters sufficiently value the air they breathe.

Episode notes:

Michael Greenstone et al., “The Solvable Challenge of Air Pollution in India,” India Policy Forum 2017-18: 1-51.

Michael Greenstone et al., A Roadmap Towards Cleaning India’s Air (EPIC India and Harvard Kennedy School, 2018).

Michael Greenstone et al., “Can Pollution Markets Work in Developing Countries? Experimental Evidence from India,” Working Paper, January 27, 2023.