When a car company founder urges the government to restrict car usage, you know the air is unbreathable. Vikram Chopra, CEO of Cars24, has made a stark appeal for stricter pollution controls in Delhi—even if it means making life harder for businesses like his.
“I run an autotech company. My entire business depends on people buying, selling and using cars—and even I’m saying that Delhi needs far stricter, far more uncomfortable rules to fix the air,” Chopra wrote in a powerful post on X. His warning wasn’t wrapped in statistics or policy jargon. It was a raw, personal plea: “I have a five-year-old son and eighty-year-old parents. Their lungs cannot survive our excuses.”
Chopra is calling out what he sees as Delhi’s core pollutant: the public’s intolerance for discomfort. “The problem here is not some science; the actual problem is our tolerance for discomfort,” he stated. His post catalogues a series of proven interventions—odd-even vehicle restrictions, lockdown-era traffic bans, GRAP restrictions—all of which temporarily improved air quality but were quickly reversed due to inconvenience.
Odd-even in 2016 reduced PM2.5 by 14–16%. The 2020 lockdown slashed PM2.5 and PM10 by 40–60%, with NO₂ falling by half. “People hated it, mocked it, fought it, and we shut it down because the inconvenience was louder than the data,” he wrote.
Chopra’s frustration is also aimed at policymakers who failed to follow through on high-impact solutions: congestion pricing, stricter diesel curbs, real-time emissions monitoring at construction sites, and satellite-linked incentives to curb stubble burning. “None of these required genius; they required political courage and administrative clarity. Both were missing,” he said.
The deeper indictment, though, is societal. “We want clean air, but not at the cost of traffic rules, construction timelines, fuel choices, or personal convenience. That mindset is the real pollutant,” Chopra asserted.
He’s urging the government to act with urgency and firmness: restrict cars, limit diesel in winter, enforce construction bans, and regulate chronic polluters like it’s a health emergency—not a bureaucratic formality. “My child and my parents do not have the biological luxury to absorb our indecision… They do not get replacement lungs when Delhi’s air policy fails.”
His final warning cuts deep: “If we don’t accept inconvenience now, we will be living inside an air-purifier-shaped coffin in ten years and pretending it’s progress.”
