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The world’s fourth-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, India is home to 13 of the world’s 15 most-polluted cities as measured for PM 2.5, according to World Health Organization data. Pollution in these cities is affecting the climate, the changes evident in declining rainfall, rising temperatures and an increasingly uncertain monsoon over the Gangetic plain, which is home to 600 million people. This is the fifth in our series on India’s climate-change hotspots, reported from Varanasi, the Prime Minister’s constituency, where air quality is among the worst in the world.