For the last two months, thousands of residents of Delhi-NCR have been hitting the streets to protest the putrid air in the national capital. Countless reels have been made, messages spread widely through Facebook and WhatsApp, gatherings organized, even as the Air Quality Index (AQI) continues to climb to record highs. But as the AQI recently crossed the 900 mark(!), observers can’t help but wonder – are the protests moving the needle? Is what I do making a difference?The answer is more complicated than one might expect, and a critical evaluation of the situation reveals fundamental asymmetries in the way the poor and the rich experience pollution, demonstrate, and call into question the very nature of protest itself. Put simply – the Delhi AQI crisis isn’t just a crisis of air, it’s a crisis of power.The air pollution protests are a middle-class movementThe first thing to understand about the Delhi AQI protests is that they are overwhelmingly middle-class led and represented. At first glance, this seems strange. Clean air is a public asset, and unclean air affects everyone, the poor and marginalised disproportionately so. So why is the turnout so unrepresentative? And does it matter at all, if they represent collective interest?The answer is that it does matter, and perhaps matters most of all. The Indian urban middle-class brings with it a distinctive brand of protest that contrasts starkly with the tools of the less privileged. When organised as a collective, this uniquely middle-class praxis reveals certain uncomfortable contradictions that we must reckon with if we are to figure out how to hone the movement into something with real teeth. A full examination why exactly the marginalised aren’t participating is beyond the scope of this article, but the long and short of it is that the rich and poor experience pollution fundamentally differently, and the differences in lived experience shape the tools of resistance available to them.Despite the burden of polluted air being disproportionately theirs to bear, it doesn’t result in mobilisation because the alternative would be even worse. Life in an urban slum is infamously precarious, and long-term harms or benefits, when viewed from this frame, can seem almost academic. Unlike traditional crises of livelihood or dignity that often have immediate causes and consequences, air pollution offers a smaller immediate benefit, a poorly defined culprit, a generalized harm, and an uncertain payoff. This creates a paradox of large-scale suffering without collective mobilisation, lending the protests a distinctively middle-class character.Delhi’s AQI protests lack a political characterAll forms of protest are not created equal. History shows us that some are just more effective than others, and for good reason. The most successful protests, as judged by how likely they are to achieve their goals, usually have three defining characteristics :Clear, Concrete Demands : Not just ‘pollution is unacceptable’ or ‘it’s hard to breathe’. Clear, concrete demands with set timelines such as ‘Budget 10,000 Cr for clean air’ or ‘Reduce AQI to X within Y months”, or ‘Increase inspection frequency at construction sites by X”. Setting narrowly defined targets allows protests to hold power accountable in a way discontent can’t alone. The protests of the middle class often risk communicating outrage instead of material proposals, assuming a consensus on what the solution is that doesn’t actually exist. Air Pollution is a wicked problem that exists at the intersection of many competing interests (such as those of farmers, politicians, citizens, and industry) and without specificity, the state has no obligation to pick a side. This is more likely to result in compromise solutions that serve everyone and no one (fog cannons) than substantive change that forces someone to bear a cost (e.g : regulation of industry).Consequences and Disruption : A protest without consequences risks becoming political theatre. If the above comprises the ‘what’, this forms the ‘why’. Do what we say, or else. Most might understand this, but this always involves an element of risk. Many of the most powerful tools of protest available carry personal cost: strikes, boycotts, sit-ins, etc disrupt our own lives to create change, but they form the core of what gives a protest its bite. The difference is classed. The air pollution movement often has trouble speaking with a united voice, because the inconvenience is structurally diffuse. When commercial escape routes exist (air purifiers, work from home, masks) that stratify harm, protests splinter along class lines, making collective bargaining and personal sacrifice difficult to justify. The result is a protest without leverage that raises awareness without applying pressure; predictable tokenism follows. The middle class gets to work from home, but things don’t fundamentally change.Escalation: Escalation is what makes a protest impossible to ignore. A one day demonstration can be safely ignored, a continued campaign cannot. Effective protests don’t operate on a set schedule – they adapt dynamically to the state’s response. When farmers marched to Delhi, they didn’t announce that they’d be marching home the next morning. They sat there until the government bent to their will. A protest that organises one day and dissolves the next with no consistent membership or structure can’t bend the system. Waiting out the disturbance becomes easier than responding to it. Why concede anything of value when the protest is going to disperse regardless of concessions?Admittedly, this is a tall order. But India’s vibrant democracy has great precedent for all three. You need not look far – many outside the middle-class intuitively understand this. When they organise, they don’t wait for permission – they make their demands, threaten agitation, and escalate until they are satisfied. Even outside bigger protests (such as the Farmers’ Protest or the Patidar Agitation), smaller unions representing underprivileged classes such as apple-growers or auto drivers achieve their goals all the time. Middle-class demands meanwhile, routinely go ignored. Protests that lack a political character are predictably met with regulatory or policy solutions (GRAP, Water Sprays, Cloud Seeding). Those that embed themselves in political economy force real political change.How does the needle move?In order to ground the protests in real politics, Delhi’s AQI protests must take on a political character, and learn from working-class movements that have moved the needle in the past. Delhi’s AQI protests aren’t bad – they reveal real discontent, mobilise people, and bring an issue to the government’s attention. But foregrounding an issue isn’t the same as forcing a solution, and bridging the gap between the two in an arena that involves many competing interests requires collectivizing power, raising the stakes, and escalating consequences.The time for awareness has come and gone, and now is the time to turn personal consequences into a political movement, and for the middle class to prove that it is just as capable of wielding power as it is of critiquing it. When goals are concrete, consequences clear, and escalation ensured, the interest of Delhi’s citizens will muscle their way onto the same table as the interests of other major organized groups, and create the kind of flux that catalyses systemic change.Farmers in Punjab will collectively vote against any government trying to regulate stubble burning – will we collectively vote out a government that doesn’t regulate the air? Or will we settle for buying another air purifier, showing up when it’s convenient, and retreating indoors at the end of the day? The answer will determine whether Delhi breathes again, or we doom ourselves to repeat the whole cycle again in 2026.Abhishek Pisharody is a consultant and development practitioner. Views expressed are personal.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.