Their fireworks lit up Delhi at Diwali for decades. Pollution wiped them out.

Efforts by Indian officials to combat air pollution in New Delhi have upended the livelihoods of family-run businesses that produced fireworks for generations.

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.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/india-new-delhi-air-pollution-fireworks-diwali-rcna177755

---