Throughout winter, north India once again found itself on the brink of an air pollution emergency that has become both predictable and persistent. What was once dismissed as a seasonal smog episode has hardened into a serious public health crisis, particularly for Delhi and the National Capital Region. According to IQAir’s 2024 World Air Quality Report, India’s annual average PM2.5 concentration stood at 50.6 µg/m³ – more than 10 times the World Health Organization’s recommended guideline. Delhi’s situation is far worse, with air quality index levels touching an alarming 999 after Diwali and remaining in the ‘severe’ category through October and November 2025.
The courts, while not explicitly naming it a fundamental right, have interpreted Article 21 (Right to personal liberty) to encompass the right to pollution-free water and air, reinforced by international declarations and state duties under our Directive Principles of State Policy – Article 48A and citizen duties under Article 51A(g). The Supreme Court has interpreted this to include the right to live in a pollution-free environment, in cases like Subhash Kumar vs State of Bihar (1991) and M.C. Mehta vs Kamal Nath (1996). As recently as in M.K. Ranjitsinh vs Union of India (2024), the Supreme Court has linked clean air and climate resilience to human dignity, emphasising climate justice. It declared the right to be free from adverse effects from climate change to be a fundamental right. However, the attempts by successive governments to tackle pollution have been ineffective and knee-jerk, with the common man gasping for breath and a Danish badminton star refusing to play in the India Open!
India ranked the fifth most polluted country globally in 2024, with 13 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities located within its borders! The health implications are equally stark. A recent study estimates that nearly 15 per cent of all deaths in India in 2023 were linked to air pollution exposure. These numbers underscore the urgency for the government to move beyond episodic emergency responses and adopt a durable, multi-level strategy – one that not only regulates emissions across agriculture, industry, power, construction, and transport, but also expands the country’s implementation capacity.
This is where India’s private sector can and must play a far more central role. Major conglomerates are investing heavily in solar, wind, and hybrid renewable projects, treating them as core infrastructure rather than add-ons. Some other giants are shifting to natural gas (PNG) and biomass for operations and upgrading their machinery to meet stringent emissions standards. Usage of compost bins to manage organic waste efficiently has been an impactful method employed by a few other conglomerates.
India’s fight against air pollution has largely been framed as a regulatory challenge, stricter standards, tighter enforcement, and public-sector-led programmes. While these are necessary, they are insufficient on their own. The scale and complexity of the problem demand solutions that are technologically agile, financially viable, and rapidly deployable – capacities that reside squarely within India’s business and innovation ecosystem.
India today hosts one of the world’s largest and youngest private-sector innovation landscapes, spanning start-ups, MSMEs, corporate R&D centres, university incubators, and climate-tech enterprises. This ecosystem represents a critical, yet underutilised, implementation asset for air pollution mitigation.
Promising technologies often fail to move beyond demonstration stages due to the absence of procurement pathways, institutional partnerships, and sustained public funding
Through technical expertise, sector-specific knowledge, and the ability to design cost-effective solutions, private enterprises, particularly early-stage climate and clean-tech firms, can help address two of the most persistent gaps in India’s air quality governance – the lack of scalable technologies that reduce emissions at source and the absence of dense, reliable, and granular air-pollution-monitoring systems.
Consider agricultural pollution, one of the most politically sensitive contributors to winter smog in north India. In Punjab alone, paddy straw generation rose to 19.52 million tonnes in 2024, with 13.6 million tonnes slated for in-situ management. According to Central government data, stubble burning contributed an average of 10.6 per cent to Delhi’s PM2.5 levels in 2024, peaking at 35 per cent on certain days. While state governments report sharp declines in burning incidents, recent research by iForest suggests that satellite-based monitoring systems routinely undercount fires, leading to underestimated emissions and distorted pollution models.
This shows a deeper policy failure – that enforcement cannot work in the absence of viable market alternatives. Stubble burning persists not because farmers lack awareness, but because affordable, convenient residue-management solutions remain scarce.
Private-sector interventions are beginning to fill this gap. Enterprises such as RY Energies convert paddy residue into high-quality biomass fuel for industrial use, creating a market for agricultural waste, while reducing open burning. With appropriate policy support, procurement guarantees, biomass purchase obligations, and innovation-linked incentives, such business models can be scaled rapidly across states, aligning farmer incentives with air quality goals.
Industrial and energy-related emissions present a similar opportunity. Coal continues to account for nearly 70 per cent of India’s electricity generation in 2025, making the power and industrial sectors central to any clean-air strategy. While large-scale energy transitions will take time, private firms are already deploying solutions that improve efficiency and reduce emissions in the interim. IIT Madras-incubated Wankel Energy Systems, for instance, is developing waste heat recovery technologies that convert unused industrial steam into clean energy, targeting energy losses estimated at Rs66,000 crore annually in India’s process industries.
Equally critical is the private sector’s role in strengthening air pollution monitoring – an area where state capacity remains severely constrained. Only about 12 per cent of India’s 4,041 census cities currently have continuous air-quality-monitoring stations, leaving nearly half the population outside reliable surveillance systems. These gaps limit evidence-based policymaking and delay timely interventions.
Here, climate-tech firms are offering scalable, lower-cost alternatives. Ambee integrates data from government monitors, IoT sensors, and satellite observations to provide hyper-local, real-time air quality data that is forecast across pollutants. Such platforms enable policymakers to identify hotspots, track trends, and anticipate pollution episodes with far greater precision. Similarly, companies like Respirer are embedding sensors into public transport systems, generating contextualised, real-time data on commuter exposure while improving transparency and public trust.
Yet, despite their potential, many private-sector innovations remain confined to pilots. Promising technologies often fail to move beyond demonstration stages due to the absence of procurement pathways, institutional partnerships, and sustained public funding. A solar-powered, 5G-enabled air pollution monitoring device developed by IIT Delhi students in 2019, for example, never progressed beyond its initial showcase.
India’s fight against air pollution has largely been framed as a regulatory challenge, stricter standards, tighter enforcement, and public-sector-led programmes
If India is serious about tackling air pollution, it must shift from viewing private enterprises as peripheral contributors to recognising them as core partners in implementation. This requires institutionalised mechanisms to integrate private solutions into national programmes, such as the National Clean Air Programme, Smart Cities Mission, and state-level action plans. Public procurement, outcome-based financing, and long-term contracting can help translate innovation into impact.
India’s net-zero commitment for 2070 will not be realised through regulation alone. It will depend on how effectively the country mobilises its private sector, across energy, industry, transport, and data systems, to deliver solutions at scale. By embedding businesses and climate-tech enterprises into the heart of its air quality strategy, India can move beyond crisis management towards durable, long-term pollution control.
One of the key principles of international environmental law governing nations as a whole is inter-generational equity, implying that, in fairness to future generations, the present generation should not plunder the environment in a way that leaves little for the progeny. On the contrary, it should, acting as a steward, ensure that successive generations can lead a much better life – a pollution-free environment with cleaner air and more potable water, besides other things!
Kothari is a corporate lawyer and president, Council for Fair Business Practices; Roy is fellow, lead climate change, Observer Research Foundation & advisory board member, Council for Fair Business Practices