Indore Air Quality (AQI)
Madhya Pradesh, India · Malwa Plateau
Monthly AQI — Indore
Annual average AQI ~94. Seasonal swing: monsoon (Jul–Aug) AQI 42–48, winter (Dec–Feb) AQI 132–148. Better than most north Indian cities due to plateau geography and distance from crop burning corridor.
India's "Cleanest City" — The Full Picture
Indore's 6-year winning streak in India's Swachh Survekshan (Clean India Mission survey) has made it a national model for urban cleanliness. The award focuses on solid waste management — door-to-door collection, waste segregation at source, and elimination of open dumping. In these categories, Indore genuinely leads India.
For air quality, the picture is more complex. PM2.5 at 28 μg/m³ annual average still exceeds the WHO guideline (5 μg/m³) by 5.6×. The cleanliness award's indirect benefits for air quality include reduced open burning of garbage and biomass waste — a non-trivial contributor to PM2.5 in many Indian cities. But vehicle emissions and winter inversions remain significant challenges.
Indore's genuine air quality advantage over north India comes from geography: the Malwa plateau at 553m elevation provides enough altitude to escape the worst Indo-Gangetic Plain inversions, and the city is west of the Punjab/Haryana crop burning corridor that devastates Patna, Delhi, and Lucknow each October–November.