However, the continuing situation of one group choosing to cause mass suffering for others out of an economic choice and no one can or will do anything about it feels a lot like one example of a global condition that doesn't bode well for the species/planet.
India has a pretty easy fix here, pass air quality laws with an enforcement mechanism at the federal level. It's internal to their borders, pretty different from a global issue that requires many types of governments and non-governmental entities to coordinate and make tradeoffs.
My thesis is, pick (nearly) any border in the world and you will find something like this happening inside of it, and that's the global condition that doesn't bode well. If we can't figure things out within borders, how are we to do it at the global scale, which as you point out is much harder?
Plenty of countries and localities have fixes in place for internal air quality issues. We've largely solved this in the US. Inida also has a lot of wood burning and 2-stroke engine vehicles. They have a lot of low hanging fruit here if they prioritize it. Dealing with atmospheric Co2 is a much bigger and thornier problem.
The US has largely solved the air quality problem, but the situation of water rights in the west feels to me like it carries the same tones of OP story.
India already has air quality laws. And an enforcement mechanism.
The issue is that local politicians are preventing the enforcement of those laws because the temporary economic inconvenience to their voting base (farmers) trumps the health concerns of people in another state.
And this is compounded by the economic reality of farming in much of Indian: in many years, the cost of chipping the plant remains, or even just preparing them to be chipped (assuming service is provided for free by government) instead of simply burning them can push many farmers into bankruptcy.
Lots of other countries have solved this and similar problems, I doubt it is beyond the capabilities of people in India to do the same. In 1970 Nixon one of America's more questionable executives established the EPA by reorganizing and joining a bunch of disparate environment related agencies under a broader remit. The requisite legislation that gave it teeth like the Clean Air Act were opposed by powerful interests, but it still got done. I'm confident the Indian government could do the same if enough people wanted to.
And then inevitably Farmers will protest, Western media will portray it as some popular uprising instead of a special interest group lobbying against the public good.
A pretty easy fix you say? You think they haven’t tried to fix it? Turns out that they also have to deal with different types of governments and non-governmental entities to coordinate and make trade offs. The central government simply lacks the capacity to overcome the obstacles.
“Why doesn’t the central government just…” inevitably is answered with “They can’t.”
If Richard Nixon of all people could establish the EPA in 1970 against economic and ideological headwinds then I'm sure India can replicate that success.
