INDIA'S GASPING MILLIONS

One year after a record-breaking toxic haze blanketed New Delhi, prompting school closings, car pileups and flight delays-

The damn smog is back and it's worse than ever.

It has reached levels nearly 30 times what the World Health Organization considers safe, or the equivalent of smoking more than two packs of cigarettes a day.

One last Tuesday, the Indian Medical Association declared the situation a ''public health emergency.''

The current haze comes on top of air pollution so bad it killed  2.5 million people in India in 2015, according to an article published last month in the medical journal The Lancet  -more than in any other country.

The main culprit that turns New Delhi, already one of the most polluted cities in the world, into what Delhi State's chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal, called a  ''gas chamber,''  is-

The annual burning of crop stubble by farmers in nearby states who are just too poor to clear their fields for replanting by less polluting means.

But rather help farmers afford the  equipment they need to clear stubble without burning it, turn it into compost or use it to generate generate biogas,  state government simply issue bans that nobody pays much attention to.

The stability is so poor it's hard to make out the colors of traffic lights at intersections.

The deputy chief minister of Delhi State Manish Sisodia, ordered the closing of some 4,000  schools after seeing children vomiting out of the window of the school bus ferrying them through the acrid air.

While wealthier citizens can afford  indoor air purifiers  and masks to filter  bad air  when they venture outdoors, there is no relief for the poor.

A hodgepodge of stopgap measures is clearly not up to the task of checking this spiraling air pollution crisis.

India's gasping millions need Prime Minister Narendra Modi's strong leadership, the one he just so promised when he was elected in 2014.

In this case,  he could and should swiftly launch an emergency national action plan that includes funds for state governments to help farmers move quickly to other means of disposing of crop stubble.