Bangkok Air Pollution Forces 352 Schools to Close

Air pollution in the Thai capital forced the closure of more than 350 schools Friday -- around a hundred more than the previous day. Lillian SUWANRUMPHA / AFP
Air pollution in the Thai capital forced the closure of more than 350 schools Friday -- around a hundred more than the previous day. Lillian SUWANRUMPHA / AFP
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Bangkok Air Pollution Forces 352 Schools to Close

Air pollution in the Thai capital forced the closure of more than 350 schools Friday -- around a hundred more than the previous day. Lillian SUWANRUMPHA / AFP
Air pollution in the Thai capital forced the closure of more than 350 schools Friday -- around a hundred more than the previous day. Lillian SUWANRUMPHA / AFP

Air pollution in the Thai capital forced the closure of more than 350 schools on Friday, city authorities said, the highest number in five years.

Bangkok officials announced free public transport for a week in a bid to reduce traffic in a city notorious for noxious exhaust fumes.

Seasonal air pollution has long afflicted Thailand, like many countries in the region, but this week's hazy conditions have shuttered the most schools since 2020, said AFP.

"Bangkok Metropolitan Administration has closed 352 schools across 31 districts due to air pollution," the authority said in a message shared on its official LINE group.

On Thursday, more than 250 schools in Bangkok were closed due to pollution, as officials urged people to work from home and restricted heavy vehicles in the city.

Air pollution hits the Southeast Asian nation seasonally, as colder, stagnant winter air combines with smoke from crop stubble burning and car fumes.

By Friday, the level of PM2.5 pollutants -- cancer-causing microparticles small enough to enter the bloodstream through the lungs -- hit 108 micrograms per cubic meter, according to IQAir.

The reading makes the Thai capital the world's seventh-most polluted major city currently.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends 24-hour average exposures should not be more than 15 for most days of the year.

By Friday morning, 352 of the 437 schools under the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority had shut their doors, affecting thousands of students.

Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul on Thursday ordered a ban on stubble burning -- intentionally burning leftover crops to clear fields -- with those responsible risking legal prosecution.

In another bid to curb pollution, a government minister said Friday that public transport in Bangkok would be free for a week.

The capital's Skytrain, metro, light rail system and bus services will be free to users from Saturday, transport minister Suriya Juangroongruangkit told reporters.

"We hope this policy will help reduce pollution."

Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who is currently attending the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, called for tougher measures to tackle pollution on Thursday, including limiting construction in the capital and seeking cooperation from nearby countries.

Regional problem

Cities in neighboring Vietnam and Cambodia also ranked high on IQAir's most-polluted list on Friday, with Ho Chi Minh second and Phnom Penh fifth.

Cambodia's environment ministry confirmed on Friday that the air quality in Phnom Penh and three other provinces had reached a "red level", meaning highly polluted.

The ministry said in a statement that the air pollution was caused by climate change, waste incineration and forest fires, and urged the public to monitor their health and avoid outdoor activities.

Air pollution has closed schools across other parts of Asia recently -- specifically Pakistan and India

Nearly two million students in and around New Delhi were told to stay home in November after authorities ordered schools to shut because of worsening air pollution.

Pakistan's most populated province of Punjab in November closed schools in smog-hit major cities for two weeks, with thousands hospitalized as air pollutants hit 30 times the level deemed acceptable by the WHO.

Bangkok's school closures come as UNICEF said in a report that 242 million children's schooling was affected by climate shocks in 2024.

Climate change can worsen the problem of air pollution which is considered a "secondary impact of climate-induced hazards", according to the report published Friday.



End of the Road for Kolkata’s Beloved Yellow Taxis 

This photograph taken on January 26, 2025 shows passengers riding Hindustan Ambassador yellow taxis along the Howrah bridge in Kolkata. (AFP)
This photograph taken on January 26, 2025 shows passengers riding Hindustan Ambassador yellow taxis along the Howrah bridge in Kolkata. (AFP)
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End of the Road for Kolkata’s Beloved Yellow Taxis 

This photograph taken on January 26, 2025 shows passengers riding Hindustan Ambassador yellow taxis along the Howrah bridge in Kolkata. (AFP)
This photograph taken on January 26, 2025 shows passengers riding Hindustan Ambassador yellow taxis along the Howrah bridge in Kolkata. (AFP)

Kolkata locals cherish their city's past, which is why many in the one-time Indian capital are mourning a vanishing emblem of its faded grandeur: a hulking and noisy fleet of stately yellow taxis.

The snub-nosed Hindustan Ambassador, first rolling off the assembly line in the 1950s with a design that barely changed in the decades since, once ruled India's potholed streets.

Nowadays it is rarely spotted outside Kolkata, where it serves as the backbone of the metropolitan cab fleet and a readily recognizable symbol of the eastern city's identity.

But numbers are dwindling fast, and a court ruling means those that remain -- lumbering but still sturdy -- will be forced off the roads entirely in the next three years.

"I love my car like my son," Kailash Sahani, who has sat behind the wheel of an Ambassador cab for the past four decades, told AFP.

"It's a simple car -- no electronics, no frills," the 70-year-old added. "It's unbelievable how much things have changed... The end of these taxi cars also marks our end."

Sahani is among thousands of Kolkata cabbies relinquishing their vehicles in line with tough emissions standards introduced in 2009 to ease the city's endemic smog problem.

Only around 2,500 Ambassador taxis were still working at the start of this year, down from 7,000 a year earlier, according to Bengal Taxi Association figures.

Another 1,000 will be retired this year, and West Bengal state transport minister Snehasis Chakraborty told AFP that the remainder will be gone by the end of 2027.

"The car is strong. Parts and maintenance are cheap and if it breaks down, it's easy to find a mechanic," said Bengal Taxi Association spokesman Sanjeeb Roy.

Their disappearance, he added, "represents all that's wrong with India's changing economy".

- Litany of defects -

The Hindustan Ambassador was the cornerstone of India's automotive industry for decades from its 1957 debut at a factory on Kolkata's northern outskirts.

Modelled on a similarly regal sedan car from Britain's now long-defunct Morris Motors, the car was a triumphant achievement of industry in the first years of India's history as an independent nation.

A deluxe model, its windows adorned with lace curtains, was for years the main means of conveyance for government ministers and captains of industry.

But the car's shortcomings also served as a reminder of deep structural problems with the quasi-socialist economic system that prevailed in India at the time.

Buyers sat on wait lists for years because pervasive red tape stopped Hindustan Motors from raising production to meet demand, while a near-monopoly on sales left no incentive to maintain quality standards.

That gave rise to an oft-repeated joke about the litany of defects found in the average "Amby": the only thing in the car that doesn't make a sound is its horn.

Market reforms from the 1980s onwards saw the Ambassador muscled off Indian roads by more modern vehicles, and production was halted entirely in 2014 after years of flatlining demand.

- 'Get with the times' -

Kolkata, the headquarters of Hindustan Motors, is the last place where the cars are seen in any great number -- a reminder of the tethers binding the city to India's past.

Grand public buildings evoke the immense riches that flowed through the city's tree-lined boulevards back when it was the second-largest city in the British Empire, after London.

Nobel laureate poet and polymath Rabindranath Tagore was born and died in Kolkata, where the national anthem he composed was sung for the first time during India's long independence struggle.

The city is also renowned for its thrumming nightlife, with crowded and dimly lit restaurants serving up chicken Kiev alongside the same suite of old-world European staples that have been listed on their menus since the late colonial era.

But its importance has shrunk dramatically since that heyday, first with the relocation of India's capital to Delhi in 1911 and then with Mumbai's ascension as the country's most important commercial hub.

Many of Kolkata's younger generations have left in search of better opportunities elsewhere, giving it a median age at least six years older than other big Indian cities, according to census data.

The city's skewed demographics prompted its pre-eminent novelist Amit Chaudhuri to once quip that while Delhi was for seeking power and Mumbai was for chasing riches, Kolkata was for visiting one's parents.

"People like me are under pressure to get with the times," retired Kolkata schoolteacher Utpal Basu, 75, told AFP.

"Old cars go, new ones come," he added. "But it will break my heart when the city loses another icon."