Air pollution is often treated as an environmental or public health problem . But it is also a deeply political one—shaped by what voters demand, what politicians believe voters will reward, which sources of pollution governments choose to target, and which institutions can compel action.
Visible pollution shapes government priorities
Last week, Grand Tamasha—a weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy co-produced by HT and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace—launched a new series on energy and climate issues in collaboration with the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania. “By contrast, the vast majority opposed stricter pollution policies on bikes, and nearly two-thirds of the sample were in households that own a bike. Even though they follow [European] pollution standards, it’s not that they don’t pollute,” she argued. “They do pollute; you just can’t see it anymore. They’re not the sputtering diesel vehicles of old. But there may be ways to make air pollution a greater political priority.
“Maybe ten years ago, there were 2 million private vehicles in Bombay, and now there are 5 million. It is less visible, but when you have 5 million of them, they’re polluting a lot.
they withdraw that support the moment the cost of those policies hit them personally, said Thachil, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania and the former director of CASI While voters support action to combat air pollution in theory. “Nearly 83% of survey respondents supported a one-car limit on households, but most respondents in Delhi don’t own a car, so they wouldn’t be affected by this,” he explained. Chandrashekhar noted that more “visible” causes of pollution attract disproportionate attention, often skewing government priorities. Thachil said that his team’s research suggests that personalised information about pollution exposure can change how voters think about the issue. “We conducted an experiment in which enumerators told some respondents what their indoor Air Quality Index (AQI) was at the start of the survey, and we told others only at the very end after all the questions were asked,” he explained. “What we found is that telling voters their indoor AQI at the beginning raised their political prioritisation of air pollution quite significantly.”
