MAHATMA GANDHI SEVERELY criticised modern civilisation in his 1909 book, “Hind Swaraj” on the ground that it was rooted in, what he called, “incessant multiplication of wants and desires" of humans. Four years later, in 1913, he in his article “GENERAL KNOWLEDGE ABOUT HEALTH” very prophetically wrote that air provided by nature free of cost for humans to breathe would be polluted because of modern civilisation. With anguish he proceeded to state in the above article that .".....civilisation has put a price even on air. In these times, one has to go off to distant places to take the air, and this costs money…. It would not, therefore, be quite true to say in modern times that “air is free.”
On 22 March 1931, in his article “Of Princes and Paupers”, Gandhi wrote that in a just administration – which he described as swaraj, dharmaraj, Ramarajya, or the people’s raj – everyone from the ruler to the poorest person “would enjoy pure air and water.”
Those utterances of Gandhi assume profound significance in the context of gathering crises caused by mounting air pollution, climate chaos and grave threat to the very right to life and health. Against such backdrop, we need to look at the deteriorating air quality, especially in western and northern India, over the past few weeks. The stark difference on the morning after Diwali in large parts of India should not require a negotiation over whether it is safe to breathe, unlike during religious celebrations. Yet, once again, the festival’s aftermath has exposed the distance between India’s constitutional promises and the conditions in which people live, as well as their choice to participate in activities that erode their own standard of living. Delhi has recorded its most polluted Diwali in five years, and the pollution is said to be worse than the official figures suggest, with several stations going offline during the peak period of firecracker use. Private air quality monitors reported AQI levels of 2,000+ in parts of Delhi on Sunday. However, government data indicate it is between 300 and 400; hence, this documented crisis is being exacerbated by confusion over the data. But the political question remains – regardless of the actual number, as the air quality is for everyone to see and notice – why must citizens bear the brunt of a danger that is annual and cyclical in nature? Who answers for the child whose classroom closes, the worker who cannot avoid outdoor exposure, or the household expected to purchase protection against the outside air and what truly is the responsibility of the Government during these times? When will the citizens of our country ensure that the environment is a valid question during elections?
There is a lesson to be learnt from the world, across different jurisdictions, where young climate campaigners have insisted that these are fundamentally political questions and have asked for answers from their ruling regimes. From Greta Thunberg organising a school strike outside the Swedish Parliament to Disha Ravi leading the Fridays for Future Chapter in India and Ridhima Pandey filing petitions in the National Green Tribunal and the Supreme Court advocating for climate justice, the central achievement has been to connect environmental harm to decisions about public money, infrastructure, health and whose future counts, and India’s recurring air emergency and other climate change-related disasters make that approach urgently relevant.
Youth Movements Across the World
What started in August 2018 with 15-year-old Greta Thunberg can arguably serve as the foundation for the worldwide youth protests in 2026. Greta began a school strike outside the Swedish Parliament and helped inspire a worldwide movement, ‘Fridays for Future’, a youth-led movement demanding climate action in public squares and streets across Europe, including Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom and made climate change and policy a question of political and democratic accountability. However, merely protesting does not often result in policy actions and should be led by sustained organising and scrutiny of governmental actions, budgets, and even using courts as a ground of contestation to hold the government responsible. In fact, the recent protests across Europe have highlighted deteriorating school facilities and shown that youth have concerns about the conditions of everyday life. It showcases that there is no separation between adequate public services and an environmental future, and how they are currently not being met for young people who need and demand both – not just for the distant future but for the present.
This movement extends well beyond Europe and the First World. In Uganda, Vanessa Nakate’s ‘Rise Up’ movement has sought to amplify African activists whose communities face climate vulnerability yet receive less international attention. In the Pacific, especially in the small Island nations, students and youth in Vanuatu helped build the campaign and the case that led to the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion (ICJ AO) on the Positive Obligations of States with Respect to Climate Change. Students did not replace Governments or judges but rather helped create the political momentum through which those institutions acted, by seeking power over decisions that shape their lives. In fact, even in the recent US mid-term elections, energy affordability and resistance to data-centre growth were cited as significant campaign issues. This highlights the central problem – that environmental issues are gaining political momentum and are currently an electoral issue. It illustrates how a seemingly technical question about utility investment became an intelligible electoral demand: households should not automatically subsidise the expansion of some of the world’s wealthiest businesses, especially at the cost of the local environment, which affects drinking water, electricity consumption, and local biodiversity. The issue of data centres has captured the voting population and the politics of the day, showing that the impact on the environment and climate is no longer a future concern but rather a present one.
International Law on Youth Movements
Youth-led school strikes, including Fridays for Future, brought these questions into public view between elections, with students missing school because of deteriorating infrastructure and environmental hazards, experiencing environmental policy in the present. Their intervention was powerful because it exposed a mismatch in democratic time: electoral cycles reward immediate results, while delayed environmental action shifts costs onto people who may have little or no vote when decisions are made. In fact, by the time elections roll around, it often feels as though there are causes more pressing, more urgent, and more deplorable than the environment, thereby ensuring that political parties themselves refuse to focus on it. Europe also demonstrates how easily governments can turn attention from the grievance to the inconvenience of expressing it. In February 2024, Michel Forst, the UN Special Rapporteur on environmental defenders under the Aarhus Convention, warned that repression of peaceful environmental protest in Europe threatened human rights and democracy. His intervention challenges the assumption that recognising environmental obligations necessarily produces tolerance of the people demanding their fulfilment. These rights to strike and protest are well recognised within the international legal framework, including under Article 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which protects peaceful assembly, and the mere disruption of movement does not, by itself, constitute violence. While these rights have been protected by various international legal forums, the Courts have gone one step further and recognised States’ obligations and failures thereof concerning serious climate harms and engaged enforceable human rights. Even the ICJ Advisory Opinion placed states’ climate obligations within a wider framework encompassing treaties, customary international law, and human rights, and climate demands cannot be dismissed as mere aspirations, especially in today’s day and age. This is not only about legal rights advanced in the Global North, but this movement has been recognised by nations across the world, such as the Philippines and India.
Environmental Jurisprudence in India
These global movements provide a platform for India, which should take that connection seriously. When polluted air interrupts schooling, the relationship between environmental protection and education is immediate and young people should not have to choose between attending class and avoiding harmful exposure. European school strikes offer a language for challenging that failure: preparing children for the future requires protecting the conditions in which they can learn and live. India already has constitutional grounds for addressing that gap. In M K Ranjitsinh v Union of India (2024), the Supreme Court recognised a right against the adverse effects of climate change under Articles 14 and 21, as well as the rights of future generations. The litigation concerned conservation and renewable-energy infrastructure, rather than protest, but its reasoning places equality and vulnerability within the constitutional assessment of environmental choices. Currently, the Supreme Court has also taken an active interest in identifying and enforcing climate obligations within the current environmental law framework in Ridhima Pandey v Union of India. The institutional framework, therefore, exists; however, the political and electoral mandate needs to be in place to enforce it and hold it accountable to the public. Whereas post-Diwali smog should not be attributed indiscriminately to climate change or change only to be led by the public, nor should opposition to data centres be presented as an explanation for India’s seasonal pollution. The connection is institutional: how authorities prevent foreseeable harm, allocate its costs, and respond to those demanding protection, thereby identifying that the burden is unequal. Advice to remain indoors offers little protection to someone whose livelihood requires outdoor work. Air purifiers turn a public obligation into a private expense that many households cannot afford. School closures disrupt education while leaving the causes of unsafe air unresolved. Emergency measures may be necessary, but their annual repetition demands an account of what prevention achieved between crises.
India’s demand for equity in international climate governance is stronger when domestic decision-making gives affected communities a meaningful voice. Historical responsibility and development needs remain central to global justice. They do not remove the obligation to explain whose health, land, water or income bears the cost of a particular project. Greta Thunberg and Europe’s school strikers helped make delayed climate action a visible failure of political responsibility, but why look to examples from other nations when we have youth climate activists in India like Disha Ravi and Ridhima Pandey? Together, these experiences within the Indian context also offer India a range of democratic methods: public assembly, research, litigation, and political scrutiny, directed towards specific decisions and accountable institutions. India can learn from this global experience without borrowing every tactic or assuming that every young person has the same priorities. Campaigns should connect clean air with education, public transport, employment and affordable energy. Demands should identify responsible authorities, measurable outcomes and deadlines. Universities should support independent research and public-interest legal work. Participation should extend beyond well-connected urban students to rural youth, young workers and communities facing displacement or resource insecurity. Responsibility cannot be placed solely on young people or the Government. The recent protests within India have laid the groundwork for demanding accountability from Governments; hence, Governments must act, regulators must enforce, and businesses must account for their impacts. Youth movements are essential participants in this process; they should not have to compensate indefinitely for institutional failure. Clean air and a meaningful political voice belong together: people need the power to insist that the conditions of a liveable future are protected now.