Air Pollution Management in India is facing a unique challenge of urgent intervention and achieving desired results in terms of compliance of ambient air quality standards. Such management in India is planned through city specific air quality improvement action plans. However, it is increasingly evident that such decentralised approach may not be able to achieve overall objective and hence area based, like state or airshed based air quality action plans are being proposed. Such action plans need to have technology improvement, social aspects and health aspects integrated to obtain holistic results. Such large projects require significant finances which generally is obtained through Development Financial institutions like ADB, World Bank etc., which are significant knowledge resources besides experience of working ins several parts of the world. 

However, such project financing involves critical environmental and social safeguards evaluation by these banks using their own E& S safeguards framework. Such funding also provide opportunity for the residents to use the Accountability mechanism in these Banks in case they feel that the Bank has not complied to its own policies and procedures., The proposed talk aims to introduce the concept of Safeguards and Accountability at these development finance institutes.