Airing It Out: Belonging in Ashoka's Anxiety Around Air Quality

As the smog makes its return in its almost habitual manner, the lingering anxiety surrounding the air quality too, has come back. Air purifiers are being unboxed, the number of runners around campus has starkly reduced, phone calls with family living in other states cannot help but contain complaints of the deteriorating Air Quality Index (AQI). It is through this anxiety that we can allow ourselves to look beyond the four walls of Ashoka, and ask ourselves the greater question of, “Who does the air in Sonipat belong to?”

In his book Down to Earth, Bruno Latour argues that the widespread anxiety felt by much of the human race stems from a larger sense of disorientation—a sense of loss for a collective world. He writes, “The absence of a common world we can share is driving us crazy.” Latour critiques the outdated fantasy of global expansion, instead calling out for a reorientation of politics towards a shared terrestrial commons. In other words, Latour asks for us to abandon inward-looking fortifications for collective action that bridges divides of class, geography, and species.

Reading Latour in Ashoka’s context becomes particularly relevant as students generally demand the inward fortification of the university against pollution. A third-year student at Ashoka University remarked that he “consoles his parents' incessant worries about air quality” by reassuring them that Ashoka takes adequate precautions to maintain moderate AQI levels on campus. A similar sentiment was echoed by the students of O.P. Jindal University, which saw one of the first mass mobilisations of the university in November of 2025 on the subject of online exams in the face of rising air pollution. The concerns of the students were limited to campus. No questions were raised that reflected a concern about the deteriorating air quality enveloping all of Sonipat. A student from O.P. Jindal stated that he demand was ultimately met and law students gave all their papers online.While private universities address the anxiety surrounding air quality through technological assets like sprinklers or through online classes and examinations, neighbouring communities in Sonipat, only a few meters away, remain exposed to the same air without comparable protections. In Latour’s terms, the inward direction of the student’s demands and the administration’s response to the same is a refusal to ‘come down to earth.’

In fact, the self-reported air quality data shared by Ashoka’s administration tracks the AQI in four distinct places: Murthal, Panipat, Ashoka University, and Anand Vihar. From October to November 2026, while Ashoka University’s AQI was largely maintained between the 100 and 150 ranges, the AQI in surrounding areas showed significant fluctuation. 

Graph depicting the AQI levels on campus and surrounding areas

Why do our concerns with the air quality and the measures taken for improvement cease to exist outside of a campus-sized radius? 

The refusal to come ‘down to earth’ also reflects the larger shifting of accountability when questions of who causes the pollution arise. Crop burning and other rural practices are portrayed as the sole causes for air pollution in day-to-day conversations and public discourse, when the fact is that industrial units and vehicular emissions actually contribute to a greater extent. Construction activities too, which are prevalent across campus for the majority of the year add significantly to air pollution levels, contributing to nearly 30% of Delhi’s dust load. Yet, crop burning is often regarded as the overarching reason for the deteriorated AQI this time of the year. Not only does this emphasis exempt us from acting to protect the larger space we inhabit, it also furthers an already evident ‘us vs them’ narrative of the urban, modern world within Ashoka and the rural, polluted one that surrounds it. 

This narrative is glaringly present in an email shared by the Dean of Student Affairs (DSA) on 7th November, titled ‘Measures taken by Ashoka for the pollution season’, undoubtedly written as a response to the students’ growing concerns. The DSA writes, “we would like to share the measures Ashoka University has put in place to safeguard the health and well-being of the Ashoka community.” The use of the term ‘safeguard’ adds on to the same narrative that regards the air we breathe as something distinct from the air in the rest of Sonipat. It also indicates a need for protection from the polluted air, distinguishing the ‘Ashoka community’ from the people living just outside campus on the basis of the air they breathe. The underlying implication then, is that people on campus are deserving of or entitled to protection from polluted air, while those living elsewhere in Sonipat are not. 

Even within the campus, the ‘community’ is narrowly drawn. The workers on whom the university is entirely dependent breathe the same air—often with the least access to masks, purifiers, or enclosed spaces. Although the university does provide workers with free masks, they remain outside the community our ‘safeguard’ measures preserve. The email subtly reinforces this distinction, as the vast majority of the measures against air pollution exclusively target student spaces, failing to address the people who work in or around them. Air purifiers deployed in the student commons, classrooms, and library largely remain inaccessible to the workers. Although this does point to the larger issue of a lack of common spaces for the working staff, the passive language used in the email is also worth noticing. “Tree washing is carried out periodically to reduce the accumulation of dust and particulate matter.” Carried out by whom? Someone climbs the trees, sprays the water, and breathes in that dust, yet the email neither names them nor says what protection they are given. The people who maintain the university’s air quality are the ones left out of it.

The answer to the question “Who does the air in Sonipat belong to?”, requires more than the acknowledgement of shared atmospheric conditions. Universities such as Ashoka and Jindal bear particular responsibility given their role as collective agents with significant resources and political capital. Economic resources, access to technology such as air purifiers and sprinklers, and political capital have allowed these institutions to distinguish themselves from their surroundings. Yet, the way in which air pollution is and has been addressed shows the disjunction between who bears the burden of pollution and who can access environmental security. 

However, not all hope is lost, the anxiety about the AQI reflects a genuine recognition of environmental harm. But when this anxiety is only channeled inwards towards the fortification of the campus and those who pay to inhabit it, it becomes complicit in the larger patterns of environmental inequality. The collective caring, as I am sure we all recognise, is not limited to air. The instinct of looking inward has been shaping how we respond to waste, heat, and the conditions of those who work on campus, and each time the question of who is included in the ‘community’ is asked. 

Coming down to earth, then, means refusing this mentality and recognising that the walls we build against pollution are ultimately built on the exclusion of surrounding communities. If we learn to treat air, among other things, as a shared concern rather than a private entitlement, we can build a habit of care that translates to every other issue that we share with those around us. Only then can we work towards taking concrete steps that address deteriorating air quality, not just within Ashoka, but around it too. 

[Edited by Avika Mantri and Hiyaneijemmy Das]