India, Oct. 23 -- Every October, Delhi stages the same play. The sky turns grey and the city awaits the AQI to exceed 300 for the initiation of the emergency rulebook. Cranes go still. Parents check their phones to see if school is cancelled. February is when we exhale and March is when we forget.

When I took charge in February 2025, what bothered me most was not how bad the air was, but how late we always reacted. Don't treat smog like a fire to be extinguished; smog is a season, which happens on the same dates each year. You do not wait for the monsoon to start before you clean the drains. Governance must match that calendar.

So this winter, the rules no longer wait for the alarm. From 1 November, half of office staff work from home, ...