The Supreme Court says it lacks the data. Publish the experiment.

Delhi crossed AQI 300 six days before Diwali, and the Supreme Court allowed certified green crackers for two hours on 7 and 8 November because it is "short of adequate data". This post asks for that experiment to be run properly and published daily, and for GRAP-II's wage loss — construction, delivery, autos — to be compensated rather than merely announced.

The line from this week's coverage that stays with me is not "very poor". It is this, from a Supreme Court order dated 29 October, made public on 2 November:

…this court, at this point in time, is short of adequate data to decide whether or not a complete ban would be the best solution.

That is not a verdict against the 2024 ban. It is an admission that nobody — CAQM, the CPCB, the bench — knows what that ban did. The same order allowed certified green crackers between 6 and 7 am and 8 and 10 pm on 7 and 8 November, ban back on 9 November. Two windows, two days, nothing else legal in the air: the Court has commissioned a natural experiment.

CAQM's own numbers, 2 November (Millennium Post; Daily Pioneer):

• 324 at 4 pm, from 117 on 31 October and 261 on 1 November; 332 at 5 am on 3 November
• Jahangirpuri 436; highest in nine months, since 339 on 4 February
• Decision Support System split: transport 19.2%, stubble 8.4%, industry 4.2%, residential 4.9%, others 20.7%

I would publish three things daily, before the 16 December hearing:

1. Station-level hourly AQI for the two windows against the same hours on 5–6 and 9–10 November
2. The residual: rerun the Decision Support System attribution for those hours, so the cracker increment is what remains after transport's 19.2% and stubble's 8.4%
3. Health, not only air: daily mohalla clinic counts for breathlessness and eye irritation, by district — clinic footfall is the outcome the Court actually lacks

No new hardware. Daily reports for 2–8 and 9–30 November are already ordered; what is missing is a public dashboard and one fixed format.

Now the half nobody is publishing. Stage II halts most outdoor dust-generating construction and doubles parking charges (Particle, 2 November). At the borders 714 vehicles were turned back on 1 November and 609 in the next twelve hours, with NH-48 backed up for kilometres near Sirhaul. An idling queue is an emissions machine; I would move this to camera-based enforcement or a graded entry fee. The High Court declined to stay the ban. Declining a stay is not the same as designing a rule.

A construction worker stopped for eleven days loses a week's wages. GRAP is an income shock delivered to those least able to absorb it — construction labour, delivery riders, autos, security guards. In "Let SEWA be the Benchmark" (11 May 2025) I passed on an AQI income cover of INR 300 a day after two days above 400, capped at INR 3,600 a season. Make it a GRAP income bridge: triggered at Stage II, paid through workers' boards and platform registers already on file, funded from a corpus CAQM should build from penalty receipts.

I may be wrong on the mechanics. But the Court asked for data it never got, and settled for two small windows. Run the experiment properly, and pay the people who breathe for it.

With regards,
Hemen Parekh
www.Iam-Immortal.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / www.YourContentCreator.in
3 November 2026