India’s Air Pollution Significantly Decreases Following Coronavirus Lockdown

• As India imposes a 21-day nationwide lockdown, many have been pointing out that the air quality in the country has improved much.
• According to experts, this is the first time they’ve seen “such blue skies” in some of India’s major cities.

Like many countries, India has implemented a lockdown in an attempt to curb the spread of the coronavirus. This meant closing down schools, places of worship, non-essential business establishments, and more for an indefinite period of time. Mass transportation have also been suspended.

India’s 1.3 billion population have since been encouraged to stay indoors and observe social distancing when they go out. And while all these temporary restrictions are presenting challenges to both the government and its citizens, it’s also worth-noting that it has also resulted to certain benefits.

Case in point, reports are telling us that many cities in the country are now having lower levels of “harmful microscopic particulate matter known as PM 2.5, and of nitrogen dioxide,” wrote CNN.

Photos taken around the country also show a stark difference before and during the 21-day lockdown.

As Care for Air co-founder Jyoti Pande Lavakare pointed out:

“I have not seen such blue skies in Delhi for the past 10 years. It is a silver lining in terms of this awful crisis that we can step outside and breathe.”

In 2019, IQ Air reported that 6 of the 10 most polluted cities in the world are actually found in India, namely Ghaziabad (#1), Delhi (#5), Noida (#6), Gurugram (#7), Greater Noida (#9), and Bandhwari (#10).

Watch the video report here:

However, not everyone is happy about the environmental improvement which happened because of the pandemic.

New Delhi-based analyst Sunil Dahiya explained:

“Pollution is going down, but we cannot let the suffering of so many human beings be the way to clean the air. We can only use the outbreak of coronavirus as a learning lesson for us.”

Meanwhile, other countries are also experiencing the same change: