New Delhi, Dec. 15 -- From November to January each year, the Graded Response Action Plan (Grap) becomes Delhi's weapon to clean the air. This sets a bad precedent across India because other cities imagine it to be a useful tool. It also causes irreversible harm to the health of the people in Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR) and the economy per se, because policymakers lean on it as a magic wand, only for it to fail.

The question that needs to be asked is why we need Grap-1, 2, 3 or 4 at all. When it was triggered in 2016, Grap was meant to be used as an emergency measure, while systemic fixes were rolled out to clean the air. It was always a stopgap arrangement, not a solution.

We should solve the problem with the goal of not needin...