ASKED IF he had any green crackers, a roadside vendor at NFD Circle took out his phone and searched for the term. Minutes later, he was pulling out boxes of crackers that burst in green colour.

On the eve of Diwali, of the firecracker sellers and customers in parts of west Ahmedabad that this newspaper spoke to, few seemed to be aware of the term.

Licensed shops said they sold only green crackers. Street vendors said they had not heard of them. Of the buyers, only one in three knew what the term meant.

Green crackers were developed by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research’s National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (CSIR-NEERI) after a 2018 Supreme Court order. They are made with fewer harmful chemicals and give out about 30 per cent less pollution than regular crackers. They are not pollution-free.…