Recently an international cricket match in the Indian city of Delhi had to be temporarily halted in the middle of the game for an unusual reason. The cause: air pollution levels so high that a top player for India's opponent, Sri Lanka, began vomiting on the field.
India has had pollution problems for years, but recently it has gotten significantly worse. Smog was so bad in New Delhi last month the government ordered thousands of schools closed and banned trucks from the road for a week.
But India’s problem goes far beyond New Delhi. According to the World Health Organization, the country has 13 of the world’s 25 most polluted cities. And in 2015, the British medical journal The Lancet reported that 1.1 million Indians died prematurely from diseases caused by air pollution.
On this edition of Global Journalist, we take an in-depth look at India's pollution crisis.
Joining the program:
- Vidhi Doshi, India correspondent for the Washington Post
- Santosh Harish, associate director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago's India program
- Jyoti Pande Lavakare, co-founder and president of the advocacy group Care for Air
- Anil Kumar Singh, head of the respiratory health department at Charak Hospital in Lucknow, India
Assistant producers: Ailean Beaton, Edom Kassaye, Courtney Manning, Rayna Sims
Supervising producer: Lauren Wortman
Visual editor: Aleissa Bleyl
