Recent Developments:
- The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) organised Swachh Vayu Diwas 2026 on 7 September 2026, coinciding with the International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies, designated by the United Nations General Assembly through Resolution 74/212 in 2019. The 2026 global theme was “Clean Air for Climate Action”, highlighting the close linkages between air pollution mitigation and climate action.
- The event witnessed the conferment of the 5th Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan Awards on the best-performing cities and wards under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP). A Compendium of Best Management Practices under NCAP was also released to facilitate replication of successful air-quality interventions across States and cities.
- In the 2026 assessment, Lucknow ranked first among cities with populations above 10 lakh, followed by Indore and Jabalpur, while Rourkela topped the 3-10 lakh category and Kalinganagar topped the below-3 lakh category. The assessment also expanded to the ward level, covering more than 7,400 wards, thereby strengthening the bottom-up approach to urban air-quality management.
- NCAP performance data for 2025-26 indicates that 108 of 130 cities recorded improvement in annual PM10 concentrations compared with the 2017-18 baseline, while 72 cities achieved reductions above 20% and 26 cities achieved reductions above 40%. Further, 14 cities met the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, compared with 6 cities in 2017-18.
Understanding Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan:
Framework and Assessment:
- Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan was introduced in 2022-23 as an annual performance assessment of the 130 NCAP cities, with the objective of promoting healthy competition, innovation and faster implementation of city-specific clean-air measures.
- The framework evaluates interventions addressing major urban pollution sources, including road dust, solid waste management, vehicular emissions, industrial emissions, construction and demolition waste, commercial emissions such as diesel generator sets, and information, education and communication activities.
- The assessment combines self-assessment by cities, State-level scrutiny, evaluation by the Central Pollution Control Board, independent field verification and final selection of the best-performing cities, thereby attempting to strengthen both performance measurement and accountability.
City and Ward Categorisation:
- NCAP cities are assessed in three population-based categories: above 10 lakh population, 3-10 lakh population, and below 3 lakh population, allowing cities with different demographic and infrastructural conditions to be compared within broadly similar groups.
- The 2026 assessment introduced a ward-level dimension, with national awards for wards having populations above 30,000, between 10,000 and 30,000, and below 10,000. This approach shifts attention from city-wide averages towards pollution sources and administrative action at the neighbourhood level.
Key Highlights of Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan 2026:
Top-Performing Cities:
- Category 1, population above 10 lakh: Lucknow secured the first position for measures such as introducing electric vehicles into municipal fleets, mechanised road sweeping and remediation of legacy waste, followed by Indore and Jabalpur.
- Category 2, population between 3 and 10 lakh: Rourkela, Odisha, emerged as the top-performing city, while Category 3, population below 3 lakh, was topped by Kalinganagar, Odisha.
Ward-Level Assessment:
- The ward-level assessment recognised Ward 70 of Lucknow in Category 1, Wards 30 and 36 of Bhubaneswar in Category 2, and Ward 13 of Rourkela in Category 3 at the national level. In addition, 69 wards from 23 States and Union Territories received awards under the broader ward-level assessment.
Progress under NCAP:
- During 2025-26, 108 cities showed improvement in annual PM10 concentrations compared with 2017-18, 72 cities achieved reductions exceeding 20%, and 26 cities achieved reductions exceeding 40%; 14 cities complied with the National Ambient Air Quality Standards.
- Additional data indicates that during 2025, 73 cities recorded reductions in annual PM2.5 concentrations compared with 2024, including 17 cities that achieved reductions of more than 20%, suggesting that improvements are gradually extending beyond PM10 to finer particulate pollution.
Best-Practice Compendium:
- The Compendium of Best Management Practices under NCAP consolidates successful interventions in road-dust control, vehicular and industrial pollution management, solid-waste management, and construction and demolition waste management, thereby providing a practical reference for States, Urban Local Bodies and pollution-control agencies.
National Clean Air Programme:
Objectives and Coverage:
- The National Clean Air Programme was launched by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in January 2019 as a long-term, time-bound and collaborative national strategy for improving ambient air quality.
- NCAP covers 130 cities across 24 States and Union Territories, including non-attainment cities and Million Plus cities, through national-, State- and city-level clean-air action plans.
- The programme initially targeted a 20-30% reduction in PM10 concentrations by 2024-25 compared with the 2017-18 baseline. The target was subsequently revised to achieving up to 40% reduction in PM10 concentrations or compliance with the national standard of 60 micrograms per cubic metre by 2025-26.
Major Pollution Sources:
- NCAP follows a source-specific and sectoral approach, targeting road and soil dust, vehicular emissions, industrial pollution, construction activities, open waste burning, domestic fuel use and other locally significant sources.
- This approach is important because urban air pollution is spatially heterogeneous, meaning that the dominant pollution source can vary significantly between cities and even between different neighbourhoods within the same city.
Institutional and Financial Framework:
- NCAP is implemented through City Clean Air Action Plans, State-level frameworks and convergence with existing government programmes, including the Swachh Bharat Mission, AMRUT, Smart Cities Mission, Nagar Van Yojana and other sectoral schemes.
- A performance-linked grant of ₹16,425 crore has been provided to the 130 NCAP cities as critical-gap funding for implementing air-pollution mitigation measures.
- The programme operates through coordination among the Ministry, Central Pollution Control Board, State Pollution Control Boards, Urban Local Bodies and other stakeholders, reflecting the multi-sectoral nature of air pollution.
Digital Monitoring and Scientific Assessment:
- The PRANA portal, or Portal for Regulation of Air-pollution in Non-Attainment cities, tracks the physical and financial progress of city-specific clean-air action plans and strengthens evidence-based monitoring.
- Source Apportionment Studies and Emission Inventories are increasingly important because they identify the relative contribution of different pollution sources, enabling cities to shift from generic pollution-control measures towards targeted interventions.
- The use of real-time monitoring, satellite observations, emission inventories and data-driven city action plans can improve the precision of urban air-quality governance, particularly when pollution sources vary seasonally.
Significance and Major Challenges:
Significance:
- NCAP represents a shift from fragmented pollution-control measures towards a national, city-specific and performance-oriented framework, while Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan adds an element of competitive benchmarking.
- The ward-level assessment is significant because city-wide averages can conceal local pollution hotspots. Neighbourhood-level monitoring can therefore improve accountability and make interventions more responsive to local conditions.
- Clean-air measures can generate co-benefits for climate mitigation, public health, energy efficiency, urban mobility and waste management, because several major sources of particulate pollution also contribute to greenhouse-gas emissions.
Major Challenges:
- Despite measurable progress, the national target remains unevenly achieved because only 26 of 130 cities recorded reductions exceeding 40% in PM10, indicating that improvements have not yet translated into uniform compliance across the NCAP network.
- Vehicular growth, construction activity, road dust, industrial emissions, waste burning and seasonal biomass burning continue to exert pressure on urban air quality, while meteorological conditions can aggravate pollution through temperature inversions, low wind speeds and atmospheric stagnation.
- NCAP does not itself constitute a comprehensive statutory pollution-control law with uniform penal consequences for failure to meet programme targets. Its effectiveness therefore depends heavily on inter-agency coordination, regulatory enforcement, municipal capacity and political commitment.
- Many Urban Local Bodies face constraints in terms of technical expertise, trained personnel, monitoring infrastructure, financial capacity and implementation capability, particularly in smaller cities.
Way Forward:
From Target-Based to Source-Based Air Quality Management:
- Cities should move beyond measuring only ambient concentrations and focus more strongly on identifying, quantifying and controlling major emission sources, supported by updated source-apportionment studies and emission inventories.
Strengthening Urban Governance:
- Urban Local Bodies require greater technical capacity, dedicated clean-air cells, trained personnel, reliable monitoring networks and predictable funding to implement and evaluate city-specific interventions.
- Ward-level assessment should be institutionalised through local pollution hotspot mapping, citizen reporting, decentralised waste management and neighbourhood-level performance indicators, thereby making clean-air governance more participatory.
Integrating Clean Air with Climate Action:
- Since many air pollutants and greenhouse gases originate from common sources, India should adopt an integrated strategy combining clean energy, electric mobility, public transport, energy efficiency, waste management and industrial decarbonisation.
- The 2026 theme, “Clean Air for Climate Action,” reinforces the need to treat air pollution and climate change as interconnected policy challenges rather than isolated environmental issues.
Strengthening Regional Cooperation:
- Air pollution frequently crosses administrative and national boundaries; therefore, inter-State coordination, airshed-based planning and regional emission management are essential, particularly for highly polluted urban and industrial clusters.
Conclusion:
- India’s clean-air strategy is gradually evolving from a broad national programme towards a data-driven, source-specific, performance-linked and decentralised framework.
- The progress recorded under NCAP demonstrates that targeted interventions can improve air quality, but the uneven performance across cities shows that implementation capacity, enforcement, scientific assessment and local accountability remain critical.
- The combination of NCAP, Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan, PRANA, source-apportionment studies and ward-level assessment can provide a stronger institutional architecture for achieving cleaner air, provided that environmental governance is integrated with urban planning, climate policy and public participation.
Value Addition for UPSC:
Key Concepts:
- PM10: Particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of 10 micrometres or less, capable of entering the respiratory system.
- PM2.5: Fine particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of 2.5 micrometres or less, which can penetrate deeper into the lungs and enter the bloodstream.
- Source Apportionment: Scientific assessment of the relative contribution of different pollution sources to ambient pollutant concentrations.
- Non-Attainment City: A city that fails to meet prescribed National Ambient Air Quality Standards over the specified assessment period.
- Airshed Approach: Management of air pollution across a geographical region sharing a common atmospheric environment rather than restricting interventions to individual administrative boundaries.
Mains Enrichment:
- “Clean air is not merely an environmental objective; it is a public-health, economic-productivity and climate-resilience imperative.”
- Way forward: Shift from city-wide averages to airshed-based planning, from generic measures to source-specific interventions, and from government-led programmes to whole-of-society participation.
