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Diwali 2026: Smoke, noise, fires and the failure of restraint

CJP Team    
Across cities, Diwali celebrations brought severe pollution, excessive noise, fires, deaths and violence, the events raise questions about civic responsibility and enforcement: when existing rules repeatedly fail, what measures can ensure celebrations do not endanger others?
Representation Image | EFE-EPA/HARISH TYAGI

The Diwali night began with celebrations, but in several cities, it was followed by smoke, severe pollution and a large number of emergency calls. In Delhi, air quality deteriorated sharply as the evening progressed.

On November 8, at 10 pm, the city’s overall AQI stood at 371, while 20 monitoring stations were in the “severe” category. Smoke hung over roads and residential neighbourhoods, visibility dropped and residents reported difficulty breathing. The manner and method of India’s recording of pollution levels (AQI) is controversial. Independent platforms like AQI.in and IQAir reported morning readings between 600 and 610 (“hazardous”). The numbers differ because of Indian authorities/government playing around with statistics: India’s official National Air Quality Index (NAQI) caps its scale at 500 and averages data over 24 hours. Private trackers typically use the US EPA standard—which has stricter thresholds for fine particulate matter (\ (PM_ {2.5}\)) and no upper cap—and report real-time hourly spikes rather than 24-hour averages! So, in reality air quality in Delhi was worse than what was propagated.

Restrictions were ostensibly already in place, with green firecrackers permitted only during prescribed hours. Yet crackers continued to be burst in several parts of the city, and pollution continued to rise through the night. The following morning, Delhi recorded some of its worst pollution readings in years, with PM[1] 2.5 concentrations crossing 2,000 micrograms per cubic metre at several locations. At Mundka, the reading reached 3,744 µg/m³, while other stations recorded concentrations above 3,000.

The national 24-hour standard for PM 2.5 is 60 µg/m³[2].

These are not marginal departures from permissible levels. They clearly show the scale of pollution produced when a city already struggling with winter air quality enters a night of widespread firecracker bursting. AQI can be checked here: Link: https://www.aqi.in/in

When the monitors went silent

The pollution issue also raised serious questions about monitoring and public information. According to the Indian Express, on Diwali night, 45 of Delhi’s 59 monitoring stations had missing hourly readings for at least one pollutant. By midnight, 29 stations were not reporting some readings, and by 1 am the number had risen to 36. This was also the period when particulate pollution was peaking.

Data later released by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee showed that several of the missing periods coincided with extremely high concentrations. An analysis found that all 125 station-hour readings missing from the Central Pollution Control Board’s records were above 1,000 µg/m³ in the corresponding DPCC data, the Times of India reported.

The gaps matter because people cannot protect themselves from a danger whose extent is not being clearly recorded or publicly reflected during the period when exposure is at its highest.

Stubble burning cannot explain away everything

The issue of Delhi’s air pollution has often been reduced to one familiar explanation: farm fires and stubble burning. Crop-residue burning remains a serious source of pollution across the wider northern air shed. On Diwali day, Punjab recorded 1,152 farm fires, the highest single-day figure of the season, sharply increasing the state’s cumulative tally.

But acknowledging the contribution of stubble burning cannot explain away what happened within Delhi as evening celebrations intensified. The pollution surge followed sunset and continued through the night, with experts pointing to stagnant winter conditions combined with substantial firecracker emissions. At several locations, pollution levels rose sharply during the hours when crackers were being burst.

 

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Mumbai also recorded sharp localised spikes after nightfall, while several inland cities in Maharashtra reported poor and very poor air quality. Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Nagpur, Malegaon and other cities recorded serious deterioration.

The available evidence does not require a choice between farm fires and firecrackers. Both can contribute. The problem arises when one source is repeatedly invoked to minimise or divert attention from another.

Mumbai’s averages and the air people actually breathed

Mumbai initially appeared to have had a better Diwali, with its citywide AQI lower than during the corresponding period last year. But citywide averages concealed what was happening in individual neighbourhoods.

In Andheri, PM2.5 stood at 42 at 8 pm. Within two hours, it had surged to nearly 500 in one set of readings and even higher on private monitoring platforms.

Malad recorded similarly extreme levels, while Chembur saw PM10 concentrations of around 480. Other parts of the city also recorded sharp spikes after dark.

A citywide average may suggest improvement, but a resident does not breathe the city’s average. People breathe the air immediately around their homes, workplaces and neighbourhoods.

This is particularly important for children, elderly people and those already affected by respiratory or other health conditions.

The morning after Diwali brought little relief to several areas. Eight monitoring locations in Mumbai entered the “poor” category, with Bandra East among the worst affected.

Even the upper floors are not an escape

A study in Mumbai added another dimension to the problem of urban pollution. There is often an assumption that living high above the street means living above the worst of the city’s polluted air. The findings suggested otherwise.

According to a study by the Mumbai Ecological Research and Analysis Group (MERAG), across residential complexes in Wadala, upper floors of high-rises could be up to 40 per cent more polluted than lower levels. Researchers found a persistent increase in pollution with height in the buildings examined. Smoke and fine particles do not necessarily remain at street level. Air currents, distant emissions and complicated wind patterns created by clusters of high-rise buildings can carry and trap pollutants at higher elevations. For residents of increasingly vertical cities, moving higher may not always mean moving away from pollution.

Less noise, but still too much

There was one limited positive trend. Mumbai’s peak firecracker noise levels were reported to have fallen sharply compared with levels recorded two decades ago. A recent study found peak readings significantly lower than those recorded in 2006. \

But lower does not necessarily mean acceptable or safe.

A peak reading of around 93 decibels was still above permissible ambient noise limits for residential areas. Mumbai has notified silence zones where firecrackers are prohibited and restrictions also exist on bursting crackers late at night.

The purpose of these restrictions is not difficult to understand. An elderly person, a patient, an infant or someone seriously ill cannot simply choose to stop hearing explosions outside the home.

The issue is therefore not merely whether some people enjoy loud celebrations. It is whether others have any right to peace, rest and safety within their own homes.

That question lies at the heart of the larger problem.

Are appeals and restrictions enough?

For years, the response has largely followed a familiar pattern. Courts issue directions. Authorities prescribe timings. Green crackers are promoted. Silence zones are notified. Appeals are made for restraint.

Yet every year there are reports of violations.

But later, allowed certified green crackers in Delhi-NCR for two Diwali days.

On October 15, Bombay High Court had extended the total ban on bursting firecrackers on public streets, lanes, and footpaths to apply throughout the year and across all festivals, including Navratri, Diwali, and Christmas.

The question that now needs to be asked more directly is whether limited permissions and appeals to voluntary compliance can actually be enforced at the scale required in large Indian cities.

If the answer is repeatedly no, then the debate over stronger restrictions or prohibitions cannot simply be dismissed as hostility towards a festival.

A ban or prohibition is not automatically the answer. But if existing regulation repeatedly produces toxic air, excessive noise, injuries and deaths, the effectiveness of the present system must be honestly examined.

The question is whether India can have a Diwali that is celebratory without turning into a night when the elderly and sick live in dread of the next explosion.

A ten-year-old and a firecracker

In Delhi’s Narela, a ten-year-old boy died after a firecracker burst in his hands. He had reportedly been holding a flower-pot firecracker outside his home when it exploded.

The flames burned his chest, and his family initially believed the injury might be minor. He later fainted, was taken to hospital and declared dead. On the same Diwali, the Delhi Fire Services received 281 calls, with at least 24 related to fires caused by bursting crackers.

The danger is known. The repeated injuries are known. The risks of allowing children to handle firecrackers are known. Yet the question remains whether the knowledge of these dangers is reflected in how people actually behave.

Fires across the Mumbai region

In Mumbai, firecrackers were linked to 137 of the 142 fire calls received on Diwali. In Thane, all 44 fire calls received by Sunday night were reportedly caused by firecrackers.

Across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, more than 500 fire incidents were reported over the weekend.

A day after Diwali, authorities in Mumbai, Nagpur and Thane imposed restrictions on rockets and similar aerial firecrackers following the surge in fire incidents.

In Mumbai, a lift operator died after being trapped as smoke spread through a high-rise building.

Other fires were also reported in residential and commercial structures.

The pattern again raises a question about regulation. Why do additional restrictions so often follow major incidents rather than preventing them?

Fifty people rescued in Thane

In Thane, a major fire engulfed a residential building during the Diwali night. Residents fled through smoke-filled passages, while some took shelter in balconies and utility ducts.

Around 50 people were rescued as the fire spread through several floors of the 17-storey building. An elderly resident described being trapped as flames and smoke spread, while others sheltered with ageing parents.

Firefighters worked through the night, while the exact cause was examined. The episode again demonstrated how vulnerable densely populated vertical cities can become when fire spreads through a residential building.

Thane’s fire services were also reportedly facing a serious manpower shortage, and firefighters from Mumbai had to be called in.

Cities have grown taller and more densely populated. The risks associated with fire have grown with them.

Two families, twelve deaths

In Madhya Pradesh, the scale of tragedy was even greater. Six members of a family were killed in a fire in Katni, including three children and a two-month-old infant.

The fire broke out in a residential-cum-commercial building, and the family was trapped upstairs as the blaze spread. A preliminary inquiry pointed to an earthen lamp as a possible source. The fire was fuelled by highly inflammable material stored below, while rescue teams struggled for hours to save those trapped inside. The district collector later apologised to families and residents, acknowledging that six lives could not be saved despite the deployment of fire tenders.

On the same night, another fire in Seoni killed six members of another family. In both cases, families were asleep when the fires spread.

Twelve people from two families were dead, including children, elderly people and members of different generations.

The other problem: how do we live with one another?

The pollution and fires are one part of the story. The other is the increasingly visible absence of civic restraint. Firecrackers are burst inside housing societies, near parked vehicles, beneath balconies and beside buildings occupied by hundreds of residents.

Those who do not wish to participate have little control over what happens around them.

An elderly person cannot prevent smoke from entering the home. A family with an infant cannot control where a rocket will land. A patient cannot necessarily escape a night of explosions by simply closing a window.

The issue is not whether people have a right to celebrate. It is whether celebration gives anyone the right to disregard the safety and peace of those living around them.

This is a question of civic sense and shared urban life.

One argument, one death

In Mumbai, a dispute connected with firecrackers ended in the death of a 19-year-old. Shubhankar Mukhiya and his friends were heading towards Juhu beach when crackers were burst near a parked motorcycle.

An argument followed. According to police, the motorcycle belonged to one of the accused, and the confrontation initially appeared to have ended.

Police alleged that the accused later returned with two others and that Mukhiya and his friends were attacked with kicks and punches. Mukhiya fell, suffered a severe head injury and later died.

A disagreement over firecrackers had escalated into an alleged fatal assault.

The question is not simply what caused the argument. It is why an increasingly ordinary disagreement in public life can so quickly become an occasion for violence.

Violence around the celebration

In Delhi, another teenager did not return home from a Diwali outing. Sixteen-year-old Devansh had reportedly gone out with friends to buy crackers.

Police said that a group of men allegedly tried to snatch his money and phone. When he resisted, he was stabbed and later died after being taken to hospital. The circumstances were different from the Mumbai case, but both the incidents form part of a larger and troubling picture of aggression in public spaces. Diwali is meant to be a festival of homes, families and communities. Yet the night also produced fights, assaults and confrontations.

When those enforcing the rules are attacked

There is another dimension to the problem. Rules are meaningful only if someone can enforce them. When police personnel or other officials attempt to enforce restrictions on firecrackers, noise or public safety, they can themselves become targets of hostility or violence.

The image of a lone policeman attempting to enforce a rule, while facing an aggressive crowd or being attacked, raises a basic question about civic conduct. What does it say about respect for law when a person performing a public duty becomes the object of anger merely for attempting to enforce regulations?

The issue cannot be reduced to firecrackers alone. It concerns a wider relationship between citizens, public authority and shared rules.

Are we becoming an insensate and uncivil society?

This is the more difficult question raised by the events surrounding Diwali. Are Indians becoming increasingly insensitive to the effect of their actions on those living around them? Are we becoming more aggressive, less restrained and less willing to accept even the most basic rules of shared civic life?

The evidence of one festival cannot answer such a large question by itself. But it can expose a pattern.

Smoke is treated as someone else’s problem. Noise is treated as a neighbour’s problem. A falling rocket is treated as an accident waiting to happen somewhere else.

Rules are often accepted in principle but resented when they are enforced against us. And when a disagreement arises, too often the response is not restraint but aggression.

The old, the sick and the very young have little power in this situation. They cannot negotiate with the person bursting crackers outside their home. The person who chooses silence cannot impose it on the person who chooses noise.

The family that follows the rules cannot guarantee that its neighbours will do the same.

Urban life requires restraint

Living in a crowded city necessarily requires limits.

A person living in a high-rise, an apartment block or a densely populated neighbourhood does not live in isolation. Every action takes place close to someone else.

That is why urban life requires civic restraint.

It requires recognising that a celebration in one flat can become a disturbance in another, and that an act carried out for pleasure can impose danger or suffering on someone who has not chosen to participate.

This is not an argument against celebration.

It is an argument against the belief that celebration means freedom from responsibility.

The question before the next Diwali

The Diwali of 2026 again demonstrated the limits of relying only on appeals, partial restrictions and voluntary compliance.

Court directions and institutional controls remain important, but they are meaningful only when they can be implemented and enforced.

The debate must therefore move beyond the familiar argument between those who want unrestricted celebrations and those who seek restrictions.

The more practical question is what actually works.

Can limited permissions, prescribed timings and appeals to civic sense deliver a genuinely safer and less polluted Diwali?

If they cannot, should authorities consider stronger restrictions, clearer prohibitions and designated spaces where activities involving serious risks can be more effectively controlled?

A saner Diwali should not be impossible to imagine.

It should not be a night when elderly people and patients dread the next explosion, when children lose their lives, when homes and high-rises catch fire, or when those attempting to enforce the rules face violence.

What the Diwali night left behind

A ten-year-old died after a firecracker burst in his hands. A 19-year-old died after an argument connected with crackers escalated into an alleged assault, while another teenager was stabbed after going out to buy Diwali crackers.

Hundreds of fire calls were received across the Mumbai region, around 50 people were rescued from a burning high-rise in Thane, and twelve members of two families died in separate fires in Madhya Pradesh.

Delhi’s pollution monitors developed gaps as particulate levels surged, while corresponding data later showed some readings in the thousands.

Mumbai’s overall air quality appeared better in aggregate, but individual neighbourhoods recorded dramatic spikes after dark. Noise levels may have fallen over the years, but they continued to exceed permissible limits.

The festival has passed, but the questions remain.

What kind of institutional controls can actually ensure compliance? Is a stronger prohibition necessary where limited regulation repeatedly fails? And what does our conduct during these celebrations say about our capacity to live with consideration for others?

These are not questions about whether people should celebrate their festivals.

They are questions about how they celebrate them, and whether celebration can coexist with civic responsibility, public safety and respect for the people living around us.

A festival cannot become an occasion when the old and sick live in dread, young lives are lost, public spaces turn violent and even those attempting to enforce the law face aggression.

The smoke, noise, fires and violence of this Diwali should force a more serious conversation before the next one arrives.

 

[1] PM means Particulate Matter (also known as particle pollution), which is a mix of microscopic solid particles and liquid droplets suspended in the air).

[2] µg/m³ stands for micrograms per cubic meter and measures the mass concentration of a pollutant in a specific volume of air.

 

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