Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

The Indian capital's air quality worsened to alarming levels days before the major Indian Hindu festival during which bursting firecrackers is a traditional ritual and smoke emitting from this pollutes the air even further. The latest bolt from the blue for the Delhiites was farmers in the neighboring states of Punjab and Haryana burning their paddy crops and other organic waste, which adds to the toxicity of Delhi's air.

Just a week before Diwali (scheduled for November 11), Delhi's air quality was judged many times more toxic and hazardous than haze veiling Southeast Asian countries. Credible news reports pegged the Indian capital's air pollution levels at 27 times the safe limit on the morning of November 4.

Besides the haze emanating from Punjab and Haryana farmers burning their paddy crops, there is another more severe threat which is growing by the day, but continues to be ignored. This threat is from the almost 9 million vehicles that run in the Indian capital on a daily basis, majorly contributing to the choking Delhi air.

However, the Indian government is increasingly becoming sensitive to the poor air quality of its cities. The Modi government is taking long-term measures to reverse this trend.

A big step that the Modi government has taken and is going to announce at the Paris climate change conference beginning on November 30 is an ambitious plan for New Delhi to use alternative and clean sources of energy like solar power on a massive scale.

At the third India Africa Forum Summit in New Delhi in late October, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi talked about his plan to invite around 110 nations to join an international solar alliance to be spearheaded by India and launched at the Paris Climate Conference, known as COP21, on November 30.

The proposed alliance is to be named the International Agency for Solar Policy and Application and is aimed at a host of African nations and others located between Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn to act as a platform for countries to share technologies as opposed to relying on costly transfers from the EU and US.

India has already come up with Charanka Solar Park, the largest site within the Gujarat Solar Park, which is being built on a 2,000-hectare plot of land near Charanka village in Patan district, northern Gujarat.

Rajasthan is one of the states of India leading in the field of solar energy. The district of Jodhpur has 42 projects totaling 293 megawatts (MW), followed by Jaisalmer and Bikaner. Indian cities like Nashik (Maharashtra), Indore (Madhya Pradesh) and Surat (Gujarat) have formulated city-level climate action plans.

The Indian government is going to use solar energy in railways in a major way and provide subsidies for putting solar panels on the roofs of around 500 trains to generate electricity. This is in addition to the plan to set up 500 MW capacity solar panels on the rooftops of railway stations

Besides, India has given the green light to generating electricity from offshore windmills. India is already among the world's top producers of electricity from windmills on land, with a capacity of more than 23,000 MW. As green bond volumes increase and are expected to double globally from last year's $37 billion, India's YES Bank and Export-Import Bank have started to issue green bonds.

In light of the above, it is clear that India has finally woken up to the challenge of improving the air quality of its cities, though this initiative should have been launched years ago.

The author is a New Delhi-based independent journalist who tweets @kishkindha. bhootnath004@yahoo.com