On a cold January morning in Mehrauli, in south Delhi, in a one-room shanty, 36-year-old Meneka Deviki coughs and her chest feels tight, but she cannot skip a day of work. It would mean no food on the table for her family of five.
The air is enveloped in a grey haze, and it carries a chill and a slight smell. Deviki leaves home for work, kicking up more dust on the way to her place of employment, a building site 3km away from her home. India’s capital has a population of over 20 million and is experiencing a construction boom.
Delhi and several regions across North India are in the grip of a prolonged cold wave, with temperatures plunging to multi‑year lows. On Friday, the capital recorded a low of 2.9°C – its coldest morning in three years. The cold, however, brings another issue: pollution. This year, Delhi recorded an Air Quality Index (AQI) of above 500, making it the world’s most polluted city.
The unorganized workforce that labors outdoors is impacted most harshly by the toxic winter air. While authorities last month advised government and private offices to adopt work-from-home measures, daily-wage workers, vendors, construction laborers, and delivery staff have no such option. For them, staying home means losing income.
Toxic trap
Deviki starts work at the construction site at 8:20am. She rests for five minutes before beginning to carry material on her head to the building. “For the day, I have to deal with toxic air and the dust at the site. It is cold too, but I cannot help. I have to work. I don't care about air pollution anymore,” she told RT.
At the end of the day, Deviki says that her hair is covered with dust and her skin feels dry. “The cough gets worse at night. We are poor people, we need to earn during the day and eat in the evening,” she adds.
Sometimes during work, Deviki wants to rest. But pausing for too long means the supervisor can dismiss her from work.
“I feel my health deteriorating due to air pollution and continuous exposure to dust, what other option do I have?” Deviki asks as she continues her work in the cold.
Experts warn that Delhi’s air pollution is a serious health threat as winter conditions trap toxic smog over the city. In December 2025, the AQI often fell in the “very poor” to “severe” range (with readings above 500 at many monitoring stations), well beyond safe limits and considered a health hazard.
Occasionally, improvements bring the AQI down to the “poor” range (around 234–279), but the overall trend shows persistently unhealthy air for much of the winter.
Doctors say that prolonged exposure to these high AQI levels poses serious respiratory and cardiovascular risks, especially for people like Deviki who work outdoors and cannot avoid breathing Delhi’s polluted air.
The recurring problem and the fixes
Air quality in Delhi worsens considerably during winters, starting from October to February. Experts say multiple factors are responsible for this, including stubble burning in the neighboring states, heavy traffic, industrial emissions, and weather conditions that trap the polluted air close to the ground.
In these months, the pollution reaches hazardous levels, with the prime pollutants particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) rising far beyond safe limits.
The Delhi government launched the Air Pollution Mitigation Plan 2025 in January, hailing it as a seminal step in the city’s efforts to clean its air. The plan is a blend of technology‑driven solutions, with the introduction of more stringent regulations, and public participation to confront pollution, according to authorities.
The Delhi government has also introduced a financial support scheme for construction workers affected by restrictions under the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP). During GRAP‑III and GRAP‑IV, when construction activities were halted to reduce pollution, the government announced compensation of 10,000 rupees ($110) per registered worker through a direct benefit transfer model.
Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta has called pollution a “legacy problem” that cannot be fixed with a “magic wand” and said her government was taking all measures to curb it, exceeding the efforts of her predecessors.
“The government is doing everything from anti‑dust drives and strict GRAP curbs to sewage interception and large‑scale cleaning drives. Our government has taken all the pollution‑related measures that previous governments did not take, like mitigation plans, stricter action on industrial pollution, activating enforcement agencies, and efforts to eliminate open burning,” she said.
Little option for the city’s informal workers
When Delhi’s air becomes toxic, the city’s better-off have the option to remain indoors, where many can log in from laptops, and schools move classes online. But outside the metro station in Panchseel Park, 36-year-old Rashmi Tinka has no such option.
She leans over a makeshift cart of momos and boiled eggs, wrapped in a sari and an overcoat. Her cart is decorated with colorful lights. The air grows hazy as evening approaches, and this is when she expects more customers. She needs to stay there amid the cold.
“We are breathing smog to survive,” she says. "My eyes burn all day. Sometimes I have a headache. Our work has no rest option,” she explains.
Tinka is one of the millions of workers in Delhi’s vast informal economy who keep the city running – selling food, hauling bricks, and picking up waste – mostly outdoors.
Both Deviki and Tinka say that when emergency pollution measures are implemented by the authorities, they hardly feel any change as they have too keep working and stay outside.
A report by Greenpeace India and the Workers’ Collective for Climate Justice South Asia, titled ‘Laboring through the Climate Crisis,’ released in May 2025, notes that Delhi alone is home to over 400,000 street vendors, about 200,000 waste pickers, around 500,000 domestic workers, and 500,000 rickshaw pullers. The report notes the workers often endure long hours outdoors without access to basic services like clean water, cooling spaces, sanitation, or shelter.
Various studies put the percentage of Delhi’s workforce employed in the informal sector at around 80%, with 82% of men and 76% of women working informally. According to the E‑Shram portal, a government platform where unorganized sector workers can register to gain better access to social security schemes, 3.6 million informal workers are registered in Delhi, with the largest share engaged in the construction sector. This means only a small fraction of informal worker are registered on government platforms like the e-Shram portal, which connects them to social security services.
Health risks from pollution
When the AQI entered “severe” levels for several days in November, authorities announced a familiar response: schools shut down or moved online, and government offices were asked to have 50% work from home. Traffic was staggered, construction sites were ordered to close, and advisories urged the elderly and those with respiratory issues to stay indoors.
In the west part of Delhi’s Seelampur, 24-year-old Mohammad Irfan, a waste picker, stood in a thin sweatshirt as he carried a big dust bin in his hand, collecting waste from scores of houses throughout the day.
“Our worry is always that the work should not stop,” he states. “Even if my chest hurts, I need to keep working,” he said.
A 2023 study conducted by the Indian organization Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group and the international organization Clean Air Fund have looked into the effects of outdoor pollution on the lungs of waste pickers, sanitation workers, and security guards in the city of Delhi.
It found that the prevalence of abnormal lung function had reached 75% among waste pickers, 86% in sanitation workers, and 86% in security guards, as opposed to 45% in the control group. Severe lung disease was found in 17%, 27%, and 10% of the aforementioned workers, respectively, as opposed to none in the control group.
A survey of 590 informal workers across various neighborhoods in the capital conducted by Help Delhi Breathe and the Mahila Housing Trust found in 2024 that 94% believed air pollution harmed their health. Additionally, 91% reported feeling sick or uncomfortable when air quality worsened. However, 95% feared losing their jobs if they voiced concerns about air quality at work. Many were daily wage earners – construction workers, street vendors, waste pickers, and small-scale factory workers – who simply could not afford to stop working.
“Informal workers are caught in a cruel paradox,” says Bijal Brahmbhatt, director of the Mahila Housing Trust, which supports women in informal settlements and has tracked the impact of pollution on their health and livelihoods.
The Help Delhi Breathe study also indicates that workers near landfill sites face additional health issues beyond air pollution, such as contaminated water, toxic fumes from burning garbage, and handling toxic waste without protective gear.
Health experts warn that outdoor workers face a higher risk of being affected due to ongoing exposure to toxic air. “People who work outdoors in Delhi – traffic police, construction workers, vendors, delivery personnel – are at the highest risk because they cannot avoid exposure,” says Dr. Randeep Guleria, a senior pulmonologist in New Delhi.
“They breathe this polluted air for long hours every day, which is similar to being chronic smokers. Over time, it causes permanent damage to their lungs and increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes.”
Back at her construction site, Deviki hopes that the air quality improves and she can work more comfortably. “I hope that this cold is over, and the air is cleaner soon.”