Hello,

Over the past year, Mumbai has been in the headlines for the sharp spikes in its pollution levels. In February, based on its air quality index, Mumbai was ranked the second-most polluted city in the world. 

The city’s residents are paying the price, particularly those with respiratory problems, who have seen their ailments significantly aggravated by this pollution.

A key factor in this crisis is the boom in construction that the city has witnessed in recent years, as Vaishnavi Rathore and Tabassum Barnagarwala found. Dust from these sites is a significant contributor to the haze that is choking the city. 

But they found that rather than seek to regulate this construction more firmly, and thus rein in the pollution, the government has introduced initiatives and policies that have made it significantly easier for builders to construct larger projects, even allowing them to situate them closer to the coast than before.

“Working on this story was yet another reminder that environment and climate stories are not isolated anymore,” Rathore said. “They can also, like in this instance, be real estate stories.”

You can read the story here. And you can support more such in-depth and investigative journalism by becoming a member of Scroll.

Ajay Krishnan
Senior Editor