India, World's Fastest Growing Economy, Has World's Most Toxic Air

India has long struggled to pull together the type of coordinated national approach that's helped China reduce pollution. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government is now pushing new initiatives it says are starting to curtail hazardous air.

Asia's largest economy, China, has long had a reputation for smoggy skies. But these days, neighboring India is fighting the far bigger battle with pollution: it is home to the world's 10 most polluted cities.

In the coming weeks, the Modi government's policies on pollution will be put to the test as winter descends on the dusty plains of north India. Crops are burned during this season and millions of fireworks go off during Diwali, usually pushing air pollution to hazardous levels.

If strict policies to battle smog were successfully implemented, India's citizens and government would be much richer. By the World Bank's calculations, health-care fees and productivity losses from pollution cost India as much as 8.5 percent of GDP. At its current size of $2.6 trillion that works out to about $221 billion every year.

The environment ministry says it's also making headway in reducing bad air, citing its own calculations for this September when it says levels of PM2.5 came down in Delhi. The ministry has introduced an early warning system to help it take preemptive action before pollution spikes and its planned other measures like deploying more road sweeping machines.