ndians are accustomed to seeing their streets getting a lick of paint or the odd pothole being filled before a senior politician or foreign dignitaries come to town. But to prepare for a visit from Narendra Modi, the prime minister, on February 10th, officials in Mumbai deployed a new tactic. They sprinkled its roads with water.
They hoped to damp down the street and construction dust that contributes to the city’s pervasive smog. For much of this winter, the skyscraper-filled skyline of India’s commercial capital has been almost invisible behind a grey haze of particulate matter. On some days the Arabian Sea city’s air has been worse than that in Delhi, India’s more famously polluted capital. Between November and the end of January, Mumbai recorded 36 days with “poor” air quality, a level at which even otherwise healthy people can have difficulty breathing. This represents a grim extension of what was already one of the world’s worst environmental problems.
