New Delhi  -  India’s capital New Delhi switched schools to online classes Monday until further notice as worsening toxic smog surged past 60 times the World Health Organization’s recommended daily maximum. Various piecemeal government initiatives have failed to measurably address the problem, with the smog blamed for thousands of premature deaths each year and particularly impacting the health of children and the elderly. Pollution extended across a swathe of northern India -- with the tourists at the Taj Mahal in Agra snapping photographs of the barely visible white marble monument -- and choked residents. “My eyes have been burning for the last few days,” said rickshaw puller Subodh Kumar, 30.

“Pollution or no pollution, I have to be on the road, where else will I go?” he said, pausing from eating at a roadside stall. “We don’t have an option to stay indoors... our livelihood, food, and life -- everything is in the open.” The city is blanketed in poisonous smog each year, primarily blamed on stubble burning by farmers to clear their fields for ploughing, as well as factories and traffic fumes.

A report by The New York Times this month, based on samples collected over five years, revealed dangerous fumes also spewing from a power plant incinerating rubbish from landfill garbage mountains.