Respiratory Solidarities: Possibilities and Tensions of Air’s Publics in Delhi

Abstract

Delhi’s atmosphere has been a site of policy and political debate alongside multiple interventions since the late 1990s. From fuel transition to emission norms, and from industrial closure to air quality monitoring, the city has been a laboratory for governance and technical innovations looking to infrastructure a less toxic urban atmosphere. This commentary takes this contemporary politics as its point of departure to examine how otherwise disparate publics have been brought together by a shared object of concern. Drawing on research undertaken within a broadly science and technology studies framing, the commentary identifies and describes the emergence of everyday subjectivities around air and their collective assertion, or respiratory solidarities. It further shows how post-pandemic social and political shifts have come to undermine these nascent forms of collective action around air.