I don&#x27;t have a study to back it up, but it seems the high pollution levels in Indian cities are mostly because of extremely high vehicular density - based on my unscientific observation that most polluted areas of Delhi are next to transportation depots&#x2F;stations.<p>Anand Vihar - a suburb of Delhi -  for example, is the most polluted place in the world, but that&#x27;s also because it&#x27;s the gateway to Delhi for people from the state of UP(200m population). There are like 100 buses coming into that place every few minutes!<p>But then, there can be solutions which don&#x27;t negatively affect growth - public transportation, more and better planned cities to reduce vehicular density, and most important of all, elimination of subsidy on diesel - because the sources of pollution aren&#x27;t fundamentally tied to growth.<p>I don&#x27;t usually buy the argument that high growth will bring abnormal levels of emissions in the Indian context. I think that&#x27;s because manufacturing can be never be the engine of growth in India, because of inherent, almost unfixable problems we have in India.<p>So, that&#x27;s why I think that the Indian growth story is fundamentally different from Chinese growth story - or even any other growth story in the world, and it&#x27;s important to keep that difference in mind.