JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Smog is blanketing parts of South Asia, including the Indian capital New Delhi. As NPR's Diaa Hadid reports, it is making people sick and has triggered a ban on a beloved street snack.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing in non-English language).
DIAA HADID, BYLINE: Over blaring patriotic music, Sanjeev Kapur (ph) says his eyes are stinging. It hurts to breathe.
SANJEEV KAPUR: (Speaking non-English language).
HADID: He feeds his four kids through the tips he makes taking photos of tourists at the India Gate, a soaring monument to the war dead. It's barely visible through the morning smog. Clean air activists call winter the smog season, when the cold air near the ground traps emissions from cars, factories and power plants. It makes South Asia the world's most polluted region, according to the University of Chicago's Energy Policy Institute. Even by those standards, New Delhi is superlatively bad. Folks here lose an estimated eight years of their life expectancy to air pollution. Tourist photographer Kapur has no choice but to keep breathing it in.
KAPUR: (Speaking non-English language).
HADID: He says, "we don't eat if I don't work." Air pollution has wide-ranging impacts, like on pregnant women. They're more likely to miscarry, have smaller babies, have their babies die.
BABITA GUPTA AND UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking non-English language).
HADID: But those impacts are hard for people to immediately connect to the smog. So people like Babita Gupta says she doesn't think it's a problem.
BABITA GUPTA: Good morning.
HADID: Good morning.
We meet her in a park on a smoggy day. She's singing a Bollywood tune with her husband.
GUPTA AND UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Singing in non-English language).
HADID: Gupta says, I'm happy singing in the park. That's good for my health.
SUNIL DAHIYA: We can fairly confidently say that the government has failed the citizens.
HADID: Sunil Dahiya is a clean air activist. He says authorities didn't take serious measures to curb emissions ahead of the expected smog season. The local government blames their predecessors and says it will take years to clean up the dirty air. As pollution becomes more extreme, authorities are imposing measures like ordering some workers to stay home to keep their cars off the road. Delhi residents joke that other measures seem intended to deny them their small pleasures, like a ban on coal-fired grills that street-side vendors use to cook kebabs.
WISSAM: (Speaking non-English language).
HADID: In a Delhi bazaar, one vendor, Wissam, says he's switched to gas. It's not the same.
WISSAM: (Speaking non-English language).
HADID: He nods to a vendor across the alley who's defying the ban. Men crowd around his kebabs crackling over the coals. Jawad Yusuf, 31, scoops up a $1 plate of chargrilled meat with his fingers.
JAWAD YUSUF: (Speaking non-English language).
HADID: He says banning coal-fired grills is picking on the little guy - it's hardly causing the blanketing smog.
YUSUF: (Speaking non-English language).
HADID: But he'll eat a less tasty kebab if it helps clean up the air and his lungs - after this juicy chargrilled kebab. Diaa Hadid, NPR News, New Delhi. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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