It’s been more than a week that residents in and around Delhi-NCR have been inhaling the smog-laden air.

Usually, anything artificial that we introduce in the environment is considered as air-pollution. Be it the hazardous smoke from Diwali crackers or the one that has been lurking around due to the crop-burning mission—everything simulated is fatal.

washingtonpost

That said, Higher Particulate Matter (PM- the sum of all solid and liquid particles suspended in air) has become a common thing in as many as 94 Indian Cities. Since 2011, all these cities haven’t met their air pollution standards, and we wonder it has become such a pressing issue now?

#NGT slams Centre, Delhi govt for not taking steps to tackle alarming air #pollution level in national capital pic.twitter.com/6j9fZ7ZApX — Times of India (@timesofindia) November 4, 2016

The air that we were breathing hasn’t been safe for years. As claimed by the officials from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), many Indian cities have been on their list since the 1990s and neither they nor the government have taken any measures to tackle the toxic battle.

nytimes

In fact, according to the World Health Organisation's recent urban air quality database, 10 Indian cities have made it to the world’s top 20 worst cities with air pollution.

The instigating point was when the Indian capital Delhi became the center of attention, followed by Kanpur, Lucknow and Varanasi.

A user sends us this shot of #KirtiNagar's #AirQuality (318). Is you city doing any better? Share your pics with us and let #Indiatimes know pic.twitter.com/QSbt5h0fdQ — Indiatimes (@indiatimes) November 5, 2016

Besides, it also ignored a report generated by its own team, which threw light on the ill effects of air pollution over children above 15 years.

Delhi had a plan to curb pollution but chose to do nothing! https://t.co/0PnqawVdCr — Indiatimes (@indiatimes) November 5, 2016

Moreover, the only action that the institute has taken so far is deciding on the BSVI emission standards for vehicles, which is supposed to cut down the pollution levels by 60-89% by 2020. But CPCB only monitors 29 cities real time and has just one continuous air quality monitor at most locations.The rest are manual monitoring machines which are "highly inefficient" and at times "inaccurate", say experts.

So, what about the rest? Who’s responsible for all of this?