Every winter, as smog folds itself over north India like a thick, abrasive blanket, citizens turn to their phones for the day’s most essential number: the Air Quality Index. Yet the figure they see depends less on the air they breathe and more on the monitor they choose. Official platforms stop abruptly at 500, while private and global trackers show levels climbing far beyond, into ranges that defy the imagination and certainly defy safe living. This discrepancy is not just a technical quirk; it reflects a deeper institutional reluctance to acknowledge the scale of urban air toxicity.

The cap at 500 was introduced more than a decade ago, on the assumption that anything beyond this point was uniformly catastrophic. The logic was simple ~ once breathing becomes hazardous for everyone, finer

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