FARUKH NAGAR, India — The words “Indian Fireworks” are spelled out faintly in Hindi on the disused storefront.
The small factory and dozens of others in this town a couple of miles from India’s capital, New Delhi, once produced a dizzying array of fireworks. Using craftsmanship honed over decades, family-owned businesses made small bomblets that exploded on the ground, and others that spun rapidly while bursting with colorful sparks. Among the most popular were the “flower pots,” which unleashed a fountain of color and rockets that shot into the sky with a hiss and burst into a grand pattern.
Now there are neither fireworks nor any shoppers at the abandoned workshops of Farukh Nagar, which had produced the pyrotechnics since before the country’s independence from British colonial rule in 1947. The town stands as a grim reminder of the government’s crackdown on pollution and what it deems dangerous fireworks.
The reminder is especially pointed during the Hindu holiday of Diwali, which is being celebrated on Thursday and Friday in India and around the world with gifting sprees, brightly decorated homes and mountains of sweets. But mainly it is known for the riotous setting off of fireworks, increasingly in defiance of local bans.
“It used to be so lively and beautiful,” said Mohammed Hamid, who says his family business was run aground by government regulations. “No place celebrated Diwali like we did.”
Indian authorities have long struggled to curb air pollution in and around its bustling capital, which is home to more than 30 million people. On Thursday, a thick orange-gray layer of smog blanketed the city, with air quality dropping to “very poor” at nearly 400 on the air quality index. Air in the city is so bad year-round that experts say residents, who already complain of itchy eyes and runny noses, may also have shorter life expectancy due to respiratory illnesses.
Smog to smoke
Officials trying to reduce pollution have focused on Diwali because, on and around the festival, New Delhi’s ubiquitous smog, made sluggish by low winds and colder temperatures, turns into heavy smoke from firecrackers. While the government has banned their sale and production in the capital, many still travel to places like Farukh Nagar to procure them.
The manufacturing of traditional firecrackers stopped completely in 2016, but some shops in the town sell “eco-friendly” ones that produce less smoke.
Still, some question the impact of banning traditional firecrackers for just a handful of days.
“The effect of the firecrackers ramps up on the day leading up to Diwali. It just vanishes soon after the festival is over,” said Sachchida Nand Tripathi, dean of the Kotak School of Sustainability at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, who has researched air pollution during the festival.
And firecrackers are not the only source of pollution this time of the year.
Farm fires in neighboring states and vehicular pollution are considered the main causes of New Delhi’s troubles, prompting the closure of schools and construction sites and the deployment of anti-smog guns.
While Hamid, 23, acknowledges that firecrackers produce smoke, he blames the government for not working with manufacturers to help reduce their emissions.
“Our old crackers, yes, used to be more polluting,” he said. “If the authorities had asked us to produce less polluting crackers, we would have done it.”
“We know firecrackers inside out,” Hamid added.
His “Indian Fireworks” factory is among the dozens that now sit empty on one side of town, rust creeping along their metal beams. Hamid and about 80 other families had their manufacturing licenses rescinded in 2016 after pollution and a series of fatal accidents prompted a clampdown on manufacturing in the area.
“It belonged to my great-grandfather, then passed to my grandfather, then to my father. Not sure if I will ever get it now,” he said, standing beside crumbling blue brick walls overrun with wild grass that still bear the name of Hamid’s family business in chipped red paint.
The town’s fireworks prowess is also evident in language. Burning firecrackers is called Atishbazi in Hindi, named after what the community calls itself: Atishbaz, meaning those who make firecrackers.
Like others in the town, Hamid learned the craft while growing up. For a month leading up to the festival, he would take leave from school to help manage the factory.
“They say when there’s a car in the house, you will eventually learn how to drive it,” he said.
Now his family runs a small clothing store nearby, he said.
At its peak there were nearly 400 fireworks stores in the town, Hamid said. But as he and others were shutting down their businesses in 2016, a new wave of shops emerged.
A greener Farukh Nagar
Entering from Delhi, it’s nearly impossible to miss the dozens of billboards advertising the new handful of shops that have been granted license to sell fireworks that are supposed to be less polluting and are mostly imported from southern India.
Crackers in all colors and sizes line all four walls of Rajiv Jain’s 4,500-square-foot Anant Trading Company.
Chaos akin to that of a Wall Street trading floor reigns in the crammed shop, where the shopkeepers yell prices across the store to buyers and security guards (the store employs four) keep the crowd moving.
Even though Jain’s crackers are all imported, primarily from Sivakasi in the state of Tamil Nadu, where the majority of the country’s firecrackers are now produced, Farukh Nagar’s reputation still attracts shoppers from the capital.
“I couldn’t find [firecrackers] anywhere else in Delhi. So I had to come here,” said Aditya Verma, 23, who had filled a sack on his motorcycle with fireworks worth about $160.
Jain, who opened his store in 2014, also laments the government crackdown on crackers.
“When the new government was formed, weren’t there people bursting firecrackers? It didn’t cause pollution then?” he said. “People use them for only a few hours on Diwali.”
“Everybody freaks out about pollution,” Jain added.
Gufran Beig, a meteorologist and professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, in southern India, doesn’t think the extra-polluting firecracker ban is a bad thing, for Delhi at least.
“Delhi is difficult because it suffers from a diverse source of emissions,” Beig said.
“The climatology is such that Delhi is already in trouble due to the local sources like vehicles. The hostile weather around Diwali adds to the misery,” he added.
But it’s not just the pollution that worries officials.
Almost every Diwali there are reports of explosions at fireworks shops or events. On Monday, more than 150 people were injured in a huge explosion at a festival in a temple in southern India, the news agency PTI reported. Last year, eight people were killed at a fireworks factory, and in 2018 a fire at another factory killed 17 workers, The Associated Press reported.
In Farukh Nagar, Mohammed Naim acknowledged the danger of fires and accidents, while lamenting the craftsmanship that was being lost as a result of the ban.
“There has been economic progress, yes, but the Atishbaz have fallen behind,” Naim, 50, said, referring to his community’s nickname.
Like Hamid, Naim’s family also made and sold firecrackers for generations. But since his manufacturing license was revoked a decade ago, he has struggled to find work, mostly as a manual laborer, he said.
“We are being pushed around in life,” Naim said.
“At my peak, I was feeding 35 families,” he added. “Now other families feed me.”
