Seasonality
The Annual Pollution Trend
National PM2.5 has remained stubbornly flat at ~59 µg/m³ from 2013–2023. Despite GRAP, BS-VI vehicles, odd-even schemes, and crop-burning bans, the trend line barely moves.
Pollution Trend 2013–2023
Annual mean across all districts. No sustained improvement visible over the decade.
Health Burden Trend 2013–2023
Annual mean cases per district. Respiratory burden grows as pollution stays flat.
Six years of policy, zero movement
National PM2.5 in 2018: ~59 µg/m³. In 2023: ~59 µg/m³. BS-VI fuel standards, GRAP escalation frameworks, odd-even vehicle schemes, and paddy-stubble bans have not moved the national average. The levers being pulled are not the ones that matter at scale.
The data is annual district averages
The CPCB/NDAP dataset provides annual summary statistics per district (250,008 records across 233 districts). Each point on these charts is one year's mean. District-level variation is large — northern states run 2–5× southern baselines even within the same year.