स्तम्भ Stambh · Lokanīti

Same Diwali, Different Air

Jaipur burst more crackers than Gurugram this Diwali and still breathed easier. The monitors agree. Crackers add a spike everywhere. Geography and the year-round load decide how bad a city’s air gets and how long it stays bad.

Nikhil Sharma · लोकनीति Lokanīti · 9 November 2026 · 5 min read

I have homes in both Jaipur and Gurugram and saw this Diwali in both. The air figures are CPCB’s, not mine. Every source is listed at the end.

Jaipur lit up far more than Gurugram this Diwali. Jaipur still breathed easier.

I keep homes in both cities, so I saw both skies within days of each other. In Jaipur the crackers went on late and loud. In Gurugram they were fewer and quieter. If fireworks were the whole story, Jaipur should have choked first. It did not.

That is not a reason to wave the question away. It is a reason to define it properly before anyone writes a rule, or a blog.

What I saw

Gurugram was under the Supreme Court’s order for Delhi-NCR. Only certified green crackers. Only on 7 and 8 November. Only from 6 to 7 in the morning and 8 to 10 at night. A full ban from 9 November (The Tribune, SCC Online).

Rajasthan applied the same window to its six NCR districts, from Alwar to Kotputli-Behror. Jaipur is not one of them (Patrika). So the city with more fireworks was also the city with fewer limits. My street-level impression has a legal explanation.

What the monitors say

The Central Pollution Control Board publishes a 24-hour air quality index for every city at 4 pm each day. Here are the two cities, with Delhi for reference, across the week (CPCB bulletins).

Read the left side first. On 3 November Gurugram was already “very poor” at 305. On 6 November it was 368. Not one legal cracker had been lit (CPCB, 3 November). Jaipur on the same days was “moderate” and then just inside “poor”.

Now the right side. Diwali night falls inside the bulletin of 9 November. Gurugram went from 288 to 345. Jaipur went from 185 to 227. Both got worse. Gurugram started higher and ended higher.

Gurugram’s air was very poor before the first sparkler. A festival cannot be the cause of a season.

Crackers are not innocent

This is where the argument has to be honest or it is worthless. Jaipur’s index rose by 42 points over Diwali and slipped into “poor”. Alwar went from 191 to 313. Ajmer went from 139 to 231. Fireworks add smoke, metals and fine particles wherever they are burst.

In Delhi last year the night-time rise was dramatic. Climate Trends found PM2.5 averaged 488 micrograms per cubic metre after Diwali against 156.6 before. That is more than three times. The peak came between 10 pm and 1 am with wind under one metre a second (CarbonCopy).

So “it is not about crackers” is wrong. “It is not only about crackers, and across a season not mainly about crackers” is right. The difference between those two sentences is the whole debate.

Why the same smoke behaves differently

Delhi and Gurugram sit at the western mouth of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. The Himalaya stands to the north and the Aravallis to the south. University of Reading researchers call it a bowl that makes dispersal hard (Scroll).

In summer the air over Delhi mixes up to about a kilometre. In winter that layer shrinks to a few hundred metres. On cold nights warm air sits above cold air like a lid on a pot. October and November bring little rain and slow winds. Whatever is released stays close to the ground and stays for days.

Height matters, but less than people think. Jaipur stands at about 431 metres and Gurugram at about 237. Two hundred metres alone does not clean the air. What matters is where that height puts a city. Jaipur sits on the Aravalli side, outside the Gangetic bowl, at the edge of the Thar. Gurugram sits inside the bowl’s mouth, next to a Delhi of about 30 million people.

The load that never takes a holiday

The Centre for Science and Environment studied Delhi’s air for 2025. It found that 65 per cent of the pollution came from outside the city, mainly from other NCR districts. Vehicles made up nearly half of the local fine particles. The year’s average index was 201. There was not one “good” day (ThePrint).

The same study put stubble smoke at 4.9 per cent of PM2.5 between mid-October and November in 2025, down from 15.5 per cent a year earlier. Stubble fell sharply. The air did not become clean. The base load did not move.

Even the Supreme Court has said as much. Restoring a limited window this year, it noted there was “inadequate data” to know whether a complete ban was the most effective solution (SCC Online).

Defining it well

Here is the position I would put my name to.

1. A tradition is not the cause of a season. Gurugram’s air was very poor before Diwali and will be very poor after it. Blaming a festival for a 365-day problem lets the real sources off the hook.

2. A cracker is still smoke. Celebrate in a way that respects the neighbour with asthma, the newborn and the elderly. Green crackers, the agreed hours, community displays instead of a thousand separate ones, and nothing near hospitals.

3. Rules should follow the airshed, not only the calendar. The Gangetic bowl and the Aravalli plateau do not breathe alike. Curbs tied to forecast ventilation and wind make more sense than one date for every city.

4. Spend the anger where the tonnes are. Vehicles, construction dust, industry, open waste and crop burning work every day of the year. Fix those and Diwali becomes a short spike in clean air instead of a match thrown into a full room.

5. Measure the festival. Publish a city-by-city source study for festival nights every year. Then the debate can run on numbers instead of on whose tradition is easier to blame.

What I am not saying

I am not saying fireworks are harmless. They are not, and the monitors show it.

I am not saying one Diwali proves a law. Two cities and one week are an observation. They are a good reason to ask better questions, not a final answer.

I am saying that a practice millions of families hold dear deserves to be judged on evidence. On the evidence, the bowl, the season and the daily load decide most of what we breathe. Respect for tradition and respect for clean air are not opposites. Both ask us to do the harder work.

Jaipur and Gurugram, 9 November 2026.

Sources, checked 9 November 2026. City air quality: CPCB national AQI bulletins, 1 to 9 November 2026, 24-hour averages to 4 pm. Cracker rules: Supreme Court order via SCC Online, The Tribune on Gurugram, Patrika on Rajasthan’s NCR districts. Geography, mixing height and inversions: Ankit Bhandekar and Laura Wilcox, University of Reading, via Scroll. Delhi sources and stubble share for 2025: CSE via ThePrint. Delhi’s Diwali 2025 spike: Climate Trends via CarbonCopy. Elevations: Wikipedia, Jaipur 431 m and Gurgaon 237 m.