A nationwide Green Diwali Campaign was launched on 20 October 2026, running to 8 November, urging citizens to celebrate without firecrackers. It is run by WWF-India's Programme Centre–Resource Partner under the Environment Ministry's information and awareness programme, is framed within Mission LiFE, and carries a special focus on the 130 cities covered under the National Clean Air Programme.
The campaign asks for a pledge — avoid firecrackers, persuade family and neighbours, use diyas and energy-efficient lights, avoid single-use plastic, segregate waste, buy local — and points citizens to a carbon footprint survey.
The campaign is modest. The number in it is not. 130 cities is the operative fact, and understanding what that number means is the real content here.
What a "non-attainment city" is
India's National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) set permissible concentrations for pollutants including PM10, PM2.5, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and ozone.
A non-attainment city is one that failed to meet those standards consistently over a specified period — the original NCAP list used monitoring data from 2011 to 2015. The term is administrative rather than rhetorical: it identifies where the law's own thresholds are not being met, and therefore where action is owed.
The National Clean Air Programme, launched by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in January 2019, covers 130 cities — non-attainment cities plus million-plus cities — across 24 states and union territories. Each is required to prepare and implement a city action plan.
The target, and the honest state of the results
The programme's original goal was a 20 to 30 per cent reduction in particulate matter concentrations by 2024, measured against a 2017-18 baseline. That was later revised upward: a reduction of up to 40 per cent in PM10, or attainment of the national standard of 60 µg/m³, by 2025-26.
What has actually been achieved is disputed, and a candidate who knows that the figures are disputed is better prepared than one who memorises a single number.
A government summary reports that 108 of the 130 cities showed improved PM10 levels, that 72 achieved reductions above 20 per cent, that 26 achieved above 40 per cent, and that 14 met the national standard.
An independent assessment published in 2026 is less favourable, finding that only about 51 cities met the original 20–30 per cent target and about 23 cities met the revised 40 per cent target.
Both can be arithmetically true at once, because they count different things — improvement against a baseline is not the same as meeting a threshold, and the choice of baseline year and city sample changes the answer. The useful conclusion is the one both agree on: a substantial majority of the 130 cities still do not meet India's own air quality standards.
Where the pollution actually comes from
This is where an honest article has to part company with the campaign's framing.
Firecrackers produce a sharp, visible, intensely unpleasant spike in particulate concentrations over a few nights. They are also, across a year, a small fraction of the particulate load in almost every Indian city. The dominant contributors are the unglamorous ones: vehicular exhaust, road and construction dust, industrial emissions, residential fuel burning, open waste burning, and — in the Indo-Gangetic plain in exactly this season — crop residue burning.
That does not make a Diwali campaign pointless. The spike is real, it falls on people with asthma and heart disease, and the behaviour is genuinely optional in a way that commuting is not. Supreme Court directions have for several years permitted only "green crackers" of reduced emission formulation, prohibited barium salts, and restricted the hours during which crackers may be burst; a public campaign supports enforcement that is otherwise almost impossible at household scale.
But it does mean that a festival campaign cannot be the measure of a clean air policy. Source control — cleaner fuels and vehicles, dust management at construction sites, industrial compliance, and an answer to crop residue that does not depend on exhortation — is what moves an annual average. Regulators in the National Capital Region have had to build a dedicated statutory body with enforcement powers precisely because awareness alone did not deliver.
Mission LiFE, and what behaviour change can carry
Mission LiFE — Lifestyle for Environment — is the framework the campaign invokes. Introduced by India internationally in 2022, it argues that individual and community behaviour is a legitimate and significant lever of climate and environmental action, and it organises interventions around prompting specific, repeatable actions rather than general awareness.
The strongest case for it is that some environmental problems genuinely are aggregations of individual decisions — single-use plastic, waste segregation, household energy use, and yes, firecrackers. The strongest criticism is that it can shift responsibility from systems to individuals, and that a citizen who segregates waste perfectly is still breathing air determined by a power plant's emission standard.
Both positions can be held at once, and an examiner rewards a candidate who holds them. The sensible formulation is that behaviour change is a complement to regulation, not a substitute for it — valuable where the action is individual and optional, insufficient where the source is industrial or structural.
That same tension runs through most of India's environmental architecture. Measuring what is happening, whether through climate services that translate science into sectoral decisions or through dashboards that track emissions and climate action, is necessary. Acting on the measurement is the harder half.
The institution behind the campaign
One acronym is worth knowing because it appears in environment questions and almost nobody can expand it.
The campaign is run through the Ministry's Environmental Information, Awareness, Capacity Building and Livelihood Programme (EIACP), the restructured successor to the older Environmental Information System. Its network of partner centres, hosted in research institutions and non-governmental organisations, handles environmental information, public awareness and capacity building. WWF-India functions as one such centre.
That structure explains why a non-governmental organisation is running a government-supported national campaign — it is a designated node of a ministry programme, not an outside body borrowing the ministry's name.
🔑 Revision block
- The campaign: nationwide Green Diwali Campaign, 20 October to 8 November 2026, run by WWF-India's programme centre under the Environment Ministry's EIACP, framed within Mission LiFE, focused on the 130 NCAP cities.
- NCAP: launched by the MoEFCC in January 2019, covering 130 cities — non-attainment plus million-plus — across 24 States and UTs, each with a city action plan.
- Non-attainment city: one that failed to meet National Ambient Air Quality Standards consistently over a specified period; the original list used 2011–2015 monitoring data.
- Targets: originally 20–30% PM reduction by 2024 against a 2017-18 baseline; revised to up to 40% PM10 reduction or attainment of 60 µg/m³ by 2025-26.
- Contested results: an official summary reports 108 of 130 cities improved, 26 above 40% and 14 meeting the standard; an independent assessment finds about 51 met the original target and about 23 the revised one. Both agree most cities still fail the standard.
- Main sources of particulates: vehicles, road and construction dust, industry, residential fuel, open waste burning and seasonal crop residue burning — firecrackers are a sharp spike but a small annual share.
- Regulation: only green crackers permitted, barium salts prohibited, bursting hours restricted.
- Mission LiFE: behaviour-focused environmental action introduced internationally in 2022 — a complement to regulation, not a substitute.
🎯 Practice MCQs
Q1. The National Clean Air Programme was launched in: (a) January 2019 (b) June 2014 (c) October 2021 (d) March 2016
→ (a) It was launched by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in January 2019.
Q2. A "non-attainment city" under NCAP is one that: (a) has no air quality monitoring station (b) failed to meet National Ambient Air Quality Standards consistently over a specified period (c) has a population exceeding one million (d) lies outside the National Capital Region
→ (b) The original list was drawn from monitoring data for 2011 to 2015; million-plus cities were added separately.
Q3. The number of cities covered under NCAP is: (a) 42 (b) 102 (c) 130 (d) 250
→ (c) One hundred and thirty cities across 24 states and union territories.
Q4. NCAP's revised target is a reduction of up to: (a) 10% in PM2.5 by 2030 (b) 25% in sulphur dioxide by 2027 (c) 60% in nitrogen dioxide by 2028 (d) 40% in PM10, or attainment of NAAQS, by 2025-26
→ (d) The original 20–30% target by 2024 against a 2017-18 baseline was revised upward.
Q5. The national ambient standard for PM10 referenced in the revised NCAP target is: (a) 60 µg/m³ (b) 10 µg/m³ (c) 150 µg/m³ (d) 100 µg/m³
→ (a) Cities may meet the target either by a 40% reduction or by attaining 60 µg/m³.
Q6. Which of the following contributes the largest share of particulate pollution in Indian cities across a full year? (a) firecrackers during festivals (b) aircraft emissions (c) vehicles, dust, industry, residential fuel and waste burning (d) natural volcanic activity
→ (c) Firecrackers produce a sharp seasonal spike but a small annual share of the load.
Q7. Under current judicial directions on firecrackers, which of the following is prohibited? (a) the use of diyas during Diwali (b) all sale of fireworks throughout India (c) community fireworks displays of any kind (d) barium salts in firecracker formulations
→ (d) Only green crackers of reduced emission formulation are permitted, barium salts are prohibited and bursting hours are restricted.
Q8. Mission LiFE is best described as: (a) a framework promoting individual and community behaviour as environmental action (b) a scheme for industrial emission trading (c) a programme for afforestation on degraded land (d) an insurance scheme for climate-affected farmers
→ (a) It was introduced internationally by India in 2022 and organises action around specific, repeatable individual behaviours.
Q9. EIACP, through which the Green Diwali campaign is run, stands for: (a) Environmental Impact Assessment and Clearance Procedure (b) Environmental Information, Awareness, Capacity Building and Livelihood Programme (c) Ecological Investment and Climate Adaptation Partnership (d) Emission Inventory and Air Composition Programme
→ (b) It is the restructured successor to the earlier Environmental Information System, with partner centres hosted in institutions and NGOs.
Q10. The most defensible assessment of festival-focused air quality campaigns is that they: (a) are the single most effective air quality intervention available (b) have no measurable effect on air quality at any time (c) address a seasonal spike but cannot substitute for source control of year-round emissions (d) are prohibited under the National Clean Air Programme
→ (c) Behaviour change complements regulation where the action is individual and optional; annual averages are moved by source control.
📋 How this gets asked (PYQ pattern)
Air quality is among the most reliably examined environment topics in the CDS General Knowledge paper, and this campaign is a convenient entry to the whole cluster.
The first form is the programme-facts question — NCAP's launch year, its city count, and its target. These are clean numbers and they recur. Hold 2019, 130 cities, and the 20–30% target revised to 40% by 2025-26.
The second is the definition question: what a non-attainment city is. Candidates frequently guess that it means a city without monitoring, or a city above a population threshold. It means persistent failure to meet the standards.
The third is the standards question — NAAQS, the pollutants covered, and the PM10 threshold of 60 µg/m³. Numbers with units are favourite material.
A fourth, more analytical form asks about source apportionment: which sources dominate particulate pollution. The paper has moved towards reasoning items of this kind, and the correct answer is never the festival.
For a written answer on urban air quality, the proposition that distinguishes a script is the honest one about scale. A cracker-free Diwali removes a sharp, harmful spike and is worth encouraging, but annual average concentrations are set by vehicles, dust, industry, household fuel and crop residue — so a festival campaign measures public engagement rather than policy performance. Add that the NCAP results are themselves contested between official and independent assessments, and name why they differ, and the answer is reading the evidence rather than quoting it.
Preparing for CDS/OTA? Environment questions reward the pairing of a programme with its year, its coverage and its target — build that table for NCAP, NAPCC and Mission LiFE. Start with our CDS/OTA study material, follow the daily CDS current affairs, and prepare with our faculty in the upcoming Cavalier courses in Delhi.
✍️ Written by Hitendra Deswal — Environment & Polity faculty at The Cavalier. Reviewed by the Cavalier Faculty Desk.