Independent, smart, tech-savvy and ready to take on the world. Meet the new-age Delhi kids. Groomed in the best schools and brought up with access to state-of-the-art health facilities and information, they sure are a confident lot. However, there’s a flipside to being born in Delhi, they feel.

Authorities in China's notoriously smoggy capital have announced that they will start publishing more accurate data on air pollution this month, bowing unexpectedly to a social-media campaign driven by the U.S. Embassy publishing its own data via Twitter.

A woman walks past the China Central Television building in December as a dark haze hangs over Beijing.

Beijing environmental authorities have caved to public pressure on air pollution in a sign of the growing power of social media to influence public policy in the country.

The Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau will grant public access to air-quality readings that take into account smaller and more-dangerous pollution particles before the Spring Festival holiday begins on Jan. 23, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported Friday.

China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection had previously said such data would be released nationwide by 2016.

With temperatures dropping in the city, the level of suspended air particles has shot up. The Maharashtra pollution control board (MPCB) says the quantity of respirable suspended particulate matter (RSPM) crossed the 200 microgram per meter cube this month. On December 7, the city recorded an RSPM level of 210 microgram per meter cube of air. The permissible level is 100 microgram per meter cube. On December 14, this plummeted to 188 microgram per meter cube. But, last week, the RSPM level stood at 145 microgram per meter cube.

A decade ago, plans for a metro and clean-fuel buses were hailed as New Delhi’s answer to pollution. But air in the Indian capital is as dirty as ever — partly because breakneck development has brought skyrocketing use of cars.

Citywide pollution sensors routinely register levels of small airborne particles at two or sometimes three times its own sanctioned level for residential areas, putting New Delhi up with Beijing, Cairo and Mexico City at the top of indexes listing the
world’s most-polluted capitals.

Once the present foggy conditions settle down, Delhiites will again have to battle with pollution-laden smog. While the temperature is still on the higher side and humidity levels are falling, Met officials and environmentalists say that the conditions are ripe for formation of heavy smog, especially since particulate matter levels have been witnessing a steady increase over the past few months.

New Delhi: After the early 2000s, when Delhi’s air became dramatically clean after the introduction of CNG in public transport, it has once again turned into a deadly cocktail of various pollutants. High levels of particulate matter (PM) that fired the original ‘clean air’ campaign 15 years ago, are no longer the only problem confronting policy makers. Levels of ozone, a product of the breakdown of oxides of nitrogen (NOx) in sunlight — and a major cause of respiratory problems — have been going up over the years.