After another night of illness and lack of sleep last winter, Sangita Vyas had reached her limit. Ms Vyas, who runs an economic research institute, decided to abandon Delhi and its cloud of toxic pollution.
Ms Vyas is at the forefront of a movement away from India’s smog-bound capital by an increasing number of middle-class professionals and expatriates. And after the most polluted Diwali holiday of the past five years, experts are warning that the outward migration could soon start causing serious damage to the economy of the world’s third-largest city.
“I was sick all the time and I wasn’t able to sleep for the constant coughing,” Ms Vyas told the Financial Times from her new base in the southern coastal state of Goa. All five of her colleagues also decided to quit the city this year. “The pollution was hurting our productivity and our happiness,” she said.