JAMBHALI, India – Whenever people ask about the severity of air pollution, Bharti Yadav points toward her decorative door garland. “Every 15 days, it turns black,” she said, highlighting the rampant air pollution.
Outside her two-room house in Jambhali village of Western India’s Maharashtra state is a sugarcane nursery, where agricultural residue is frequently burned.
“There’s so much smoke that we can’t even look outside the house,” she said about the intensity of the air pollution. This has manifested into severe health ailments, with every family member experiencing breathlessness and coughing.
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About the author
Sanket Jain
Sanket Jain is an award-winning independent journalist and documentary photographer based in western India’s Maharashtra state. He is a senior People’s Archive of Rural India and an Earth Journalism Network fellow. His work has appeared in more than 35 publications. Sanket is the recipient of the Covering Climate Now Award, One World Media Award, New York University’s Online Journalism Award, and several other national and international awards.
