The air was thick, almost unbreathable. It smelled of burning fields – acrid and suffocating. On the morning of 16 November 2016, Bhavreen Kandhari stood at her window, watching as the city she called home disappeared into a toxic haze. Delhi’s sky was choked with smog so dense it looked apocalyptic.
Her throat burned. Her twin daughters, then 13, woke up coughing. The news confirmed what she already knew. Pollution had reached such dangerous levels that Delhi schools would be closed for the first time in history.
For years, she had been warning that this day would come. But seeing it unfold in real-time – watching her own children struggle to breathe – was the breaking point.
That morning, Kandhari pulled out her phone and sent a message on WhatsApp: “We need to take action. Who is coming?”
Within hours, she, along with other concerned parents, had mobilised 300 people to protest at Jantar Mantar, Delhi’s historic site of public demonstrations, receiving widespread coverage. It wasn’t her first protest, but this time was different. She was no longer just a protestor or activist. She was a mother fighting for her children’s right to breathe.
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I’ve been conscious of this fight for years, but I still couldn’t protect my daughters. They grew up breathing this toxic air. Their lungs are impaired. How many generations will have to suffer before something changes?
Bhavreen Kandhari, co-founder, Warrior Moms
From concerned citizen to parent activist
Nearly a decade later, Delhi is still gasping for air – and Kandhari has not stopped fighting.
She spends her days moving between courtrooms and community meetings, documenting violations, filing complaints, and pushing authorities to enforce laws that exist on paper but remain ignored in practice.
Each winter, in November, when pollution spikes and Delhi’s air turns lethal, the media calls on her for quotes.
“I sound like a broken record,” she says, shaking her head. “If you create a montage of my interviews over the last few years, you’ll see I’ve been asking for the same thing again and again. Nothing changes.”
But for Kandhari, this is not just a seasonal crisis. Clean air is not a trending topic. It is her life’s work.
Long before the 2016 protests, a pivotal moment had already shaped her fight. In 2003, she gave birth to twin daughters. As is common with twin pregnancies, they were born premature, fragile and in need of extra care. Their lungs were underdeveloped – a common occurrence among preterm babies.
She spent sleepless nights watching over them, terrified of infections. That was when she first began researching air pollution, poring over studies that confirmed her worst fears: Delhi’s air was especially dangerous for children.
“I’ve been conscious of this fight for years,” she says, “but I still couldn’t protect my daughters. They grew up breathing this toxic air. Their lungs are impaired. How many generations will have to suffer before something changes?” asks Kandhari, emphasising that every third child in Delhi has impaired lungs.
Her daughters are 21 now.
Building a citizen-led movement
Although Kandhari now dedicates most of her time to advocating for clean air and environmental justice through campaigns such as #RightToBreathe, she never set out to be an activist. In fact, she rejects the label, seeing herself instead as a “concerned citizen.”
In 2020, she co-founded Warrior Moms, a network of mothers across India demanding clean air and climate action for their children.
“It’s about mothers coming together,” she explains. “That’s a strong emotion.”
Warrior Moms is a grassroots, citizen-led initiative – not an NGO, not a corporate-funded campaign, but a movement. The goal is simple: to empower communities to hold polluters accountable. The group amplifies local environmental struggles across cities, provides resources on how to file complaints and teaches people how to build movements of their own.
“I don’t want people to just be angry,” she says. “Complaining is how you hold authorities accountable.”
For her, the biggest challenge in environmental activism is mobilising support on the ground. Most people feel helpless in the face of pollution. But small actions matter – filing a complaint about illegal waste burning, documenting construction dust, demanding accountability from local officials.
“The more noise we make, the harder it is for them to ignore us,” she says.
From the streets to the courtroom
But noise alone is not enough. Kandhari has also taken the fight to court. Much of her time is spent waiting outside hearing rooms, presenting evidence in environmental cases. One of her ongoing battles is against a proposed waste-to-energy plant in Bawana, north-west Delhi. In another case, she uncovered evidence that over 60,000 trees had been illegally felled in Delhi between 2015 and 2021.
“In the last two years, we’ve taken a lot of contempt [of court] cases,” she says. “Violations keep happening because people know they can get away with it.”
Fines, she argues, are not a deterrent. “There is a reason people in India wear seat belts,” she says. “It’s not awareness – it’s fear of getting fined or punished. Environmental violations need to have real consequences. Otherwise, nothing will change.”
Beyond its notorious reputation for being the world’s most polluted capital, Delhi also grapples with a host of other environmental crises like failing waste management, rampant tree felling, and the ever-polluted Yamuna River. Kandhari has been actively involved in leading movements dedicated to these challenges. She says they are all interrelated. “[Clean air] is not a standalone issue. It’s linked to waste management, urban planning, energy policies, and governance failures.”
Battling the system
But corruption and lack of political will remain the biggest obstacles.
Across India, 49 per cent of sanctioned posts in pollution control boards remain vacant; a systemic failure that makes enforcement nearly impossible. Even when mechanisms to hold polluters accountable exist, they remain underutilised. Kandhari has seen the government’s apathy firsthand. She has sat across from officials who dismiss her concerns, walked into male-dominated offices where her presence is barely tolerated.
“They don’t like women coming in and saying too many things,” she says. “But at least I have some privilege. Women in rural areas face even bigger challenges – threats, intimidation, family pressure.”
Yet, despite the pushback, Warrior Moms continues to grow, connecting urban and rural activists across the country.
Taking the fight to the global stage
Kandhari has taken the battle for clean air beyond India. At the United Nations climate summits, she has spoken on behalf of parent-led climate groups, urging world leaders to put children’s health and futures at the centre of climate action.
At COP27 in Egypt, she stood alongside other mothers from the networks Our Kids’ Climate and Parents For Future Global, demanding urgent action. She returned for COP28 in Dubai, amplifying the voices of parents fighting for clean air across the world.
“These conferences are important,” she says. “But they also come with challenges. Attending them requires funding, and for grassroots activists, that’s a struggle.”
The fight is exhausting.
“I no longer have a social life,” she admits, saying she’s even lost friends because of her activism.
She pauses, then adds with a wry smile: “I’m becoming cynical.” But cynicism hasn’t stopped her.
Every winter, as Delhi’s pollution levels rise again, she braces for another cycle of warnings, protests and court battles. Asked about how long she plans to keep protesting, she replies: “As long as it takes.”
This article was originally published on Dialogue Earth under a Creative Commons licence.
