It's all part of a much larger epidemic. Globally, pollution is now killing more people than wars, obesity, smoking, or malnutrition.
A study published in the Lancet last month said the environmental contamination is now responsible for one in six deaths worldwide.
It's harvesting season in the country and some farmers are lighting crops on fire, adding to the smog that was already in the air from cars and coal-fired power plants.
Often after rice and wheat stalks are chopped down in the fall, farmers will set their fields ablaze. The slash and burn technique helps planters clear their fields quickly and gets the soil ready for fresh plantings.
Conditions are expected to get worse this weekend.
The haze is also wafting over Pakistan where Reuters reports road accidents are up and 15,000 people have been hospitalized. Authorities are planning to use fire trucks to spray down parts of the Indian capital, which they hope will help clear the air.
The country is now the world's largest emitter of sulfur dioxide from coal-fired power plants.
One writer at Quartz India even went so far as to say the smog now "heralds the winter" in his home country.
Nearly 17 million people live in the Delhi region and they've dealt with smog like this before.
It's gotten so bad that United Airlines has suspended all its flights into the Indian capital.
The levels of smog being recorded right now in Delhi are more than 20 times worse than in Beijing, a city that often deals with heavy pollution.
Breathing is worse than inhaling two packs of cigarettes a day.
Just breathing the air is about as bad as smoking 44 cigarettes a day right now, CNN reports.
The air quality index, which measures the levels of five major pollutants in the air, is above 400 in Delhi. That's the highest pollution category. The air is called "hazardous" at this level.
For comparison, the air in Shanghai is registering around 40 on the World Air Quality Index, and in New York City on Friday night it was 33, according to EPA measurements.
Source: Business Insider India