Lucknow air cleanest, Indore’s second best among cities with million-plus people

Why in the News

Lucknow has been ranked first among million plus population cities in Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan 2026, the annual air quality ranking run under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP). Indore was placed second and Jabalpur third in the same category of 47 cities. The rankings were declared in Delhi and the awards were distributed by the chairperson of the National Green Tribunal (NGT). Municipal wards that improved their air quality were honoured for the first time this year. The tension sits in the scoring itself: improvement in particulate matter (PM) 10 concentrations carries a weight of only 2.5%, so a city can top the ranking while its air remains above the national standard.

What is Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan?

1. What it ranks: It is an annual assessment of cities under the National Clean Air Programme, scoring the actions a municipal body has taken to improve air quality rather than the air quality it has achieved.
2. How cities are grouped: Cities and towns are placed in three population based categories, those with a million plus population, those between 3 lakh and 10 lakh, and those below 3 lakh, so a small town is not ranked against a metropolis.
3. What is scored: The parameters cover waste management, road dust control, dust from construction and demolition waste, reduction in vehicular pollution and reduction in industrial pollution. Reduction in PM 10 concentrations carries a weight of 2.5%.
4. What the winners receive: The top three in each category receive cash prizes and mementos, ranging from Rs 1.50 crore for the first place in the million plus category down to Rs 12.5 lakh for the third place in the smallest category.

Which cities topped the ranking, and which trailed it?

1. Million plus population category: Lucknow first with Rs 1.50 crore, Indore second with Rs 1 crore, and Jabalpur third with Rs 50 lakh.
2. Cities of 3 lakh to 10 lakh: Rourkela first with Rs 75 lakh, Firozabad and Guntur sharing second place with Rs 50 lakh, and Amravati third with Rs 25 lakh.
3. Cities below 3 lakh: Kalinga Nagar first with Rs 37.5 lakh, Angul second with Rs 25 lakh, and Talcher third with Rs 12.5 lakh.
4. The bottom of the largest category: Chennai, Jamshedpur, Kota, Kolkata and Madurai were placed in the bottom five of the 47 million plus cities.
5. The two largest cities: Delhi ranked 30th and Mumbai 37th in the same category.

What did the top ranked cities actually do?

1. Lucknow’s interventions: The city deployed electric vehicles in its waste collection fleet, used mechanised sweepers to manage road dust, and cleared legacy waste dumps.
2. Jabalpur’s interventions: The city ran a waste to energy plant, achieved full collection of waste with scientific disposal, mechanised street sweeping and promoted electric vehicles.
3. The common thread is municipal solid waste and dust: Both winning profiles are built on services a municipal body directly controls, and neither turns on industrial or vehicular emission sources.
4. Indore’s standing: Indore, ranked India’s cleanest city for seven years until 2025, converted that solid waste management capacity into second place on air quality.

Challenges to the Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan ranking

1. Effort is scored, outcomes are not: With actual PM 10 reduction weighted at 2.5%, the survey ranks the interventions a city reports rather than the air its residents breathe. Eg. Lucknow topped the category while its annual PM 10 concentration stood at 137 micrograms per cubic metre against the national standard of 60.
   The Fix: Raise the weight on measured concentration decline and make the award conditional on continuous ambient monitoring data rather than on activity reports.
2. The measured pollutant is the coarser one: The survey and the programme centre on PM 10, while PM 2.5 is the fraction that penetrates deep into the lungs and drives the health burden. Eg. Road dust suppression lowers PM 10 sharply without touching combustion sources that generate PM 2.5.
   The Fix: Score PM 2.5 concentration decline as a separate parameter with its own weight, so combustion sources cannot be scored around.
3. A city boundary is not an airshed: Pollution crosses municipal limits, so a city’s ranking reflects sources it does not control alongside those it does. Eg. Delhi’s winter concentrations rise with stubble burning in neighbouring States and with emissions from thermal plants outside the city.
   The Fix: Move the assessment unit to the airshed, ranking a cluster of local bodies jointly and funding them against a common source apportionment study.
4. Self reported action invites inflation: Cities score themselves on activities such as sweeping frequency and dust suppression that no independent agency verifies. Eg. Mechanised sweeper deployment is recorded as procurement rather than as operating hours on the road.
   The Fix: Require third party verification of a random sample of claimed interventions before the cash award is released.
5. Baselines flatter the already polluted: A city that started from a very high concentration records a large percentage decline while remaining far above the standard. Eg. Lucknow’s PM 10 fell 45.2% from 250 micrograms per cubic metre in 2017-18, and is still more than twice the standard.
   The Fix: Score cities against the absolute standard as well as against their own baseline, so meeting the norm rather than improving on a bad start is what wins.

Conclusion

A ranking that scores what a municipal body did, and barely scores what happened to the air, will reward administrative activity long before it rewards clean air. The gap is visible in this year’s own result, where the winning city remains far outside the national standard. What to watch is whether the weight given to measured concentration is raised in the next survey, and whether the ward level awards introduced this year are backed by ward level monitoring data.

Back2Basics: National Clean Air Programme

1. What it is: A national framework launched in January 2019 by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change to cut particulate pollution in cities that fail the national ambient air quality standards.
2. Which cities it covers: It covers non attainment cities, meaning cities that did not meet the standards over a five year period, along with million plus cities, taking in 131 urban areas.
3. The target: The original goal of a 20% to 30% reduction in particulate concentrations by 2024 against a 2017 baseline was revised to a 40% reduction by 2025-26.
4. How it is funded: Million plus cities receive air quality grants routed through the Fifteenth Finance Commission, while the remaining cities are funded through the programme’s own allocation.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2022, GS3, 10 marks] Discuss in detail the photochemical smog emphasizing its formation, effects and mitigation. Explain the 1999 Gothenburg Protocol.”