Air pollution in South Asia is a health emergency, responsible for 2 million deaths every year1. Crop residue burning accounts for 40–60% of peak pollution during the winter harvest months2,3. Despite being illegal, this practice remains widespread4,5. Any solution to curb the problem necessitates government action at scale. Here we study whether leveraging the incentives of bureaucrats tasked with controlling burning can mitigate this phenomenon. Using a decade of wind, fire and health data from satellites and surveys from the Demographic and Health Surveys Program, we show that crop burning responds to bureaucrat incentives: fires increase by 15% when wind is most likely to direct pollution to neighbouring jurisdictions, and decrease by 14.5% when it pollutes their own. These effects intensify with stronger bureaucratic incentives and capacity. We also find that bureaucrat action against burning deters future polluters, further reducing fires by 13%. Finally, using an atmospheric model, we estimate that one log increase in in utero exposure to pollution from burning raises child mortality by 30–36 deaths per 1,000 births, underscoring the importance of bureaucrat action. Contrary to the growing beliefs that the problem of crop burning is intractable6,7, these findings highlight specific ways in which existing bureaucrats, when properly incentivized, can improve environmental management and public health outcomes. Around 1.8–2.7 deaths per 1,000 births (4.4–6.6% of the average child mortality) could be prevented in Pakistan and India if bureaucrats control crop burning across all areas of their jurisdiction as they do in places where fires would pollute their own district.