Delhi holds breath as burning farms herald pollution season

ISHARGARH, India — Harpal Singh struck a match and watched his fields burn, the acrid smoke drifting toward New Delhi, where a lethal smog cocktail is once again intensifying over the world’s most polluted megacity.

Every November, air pollution in northern India reaches levels unimaginable in most parts of the world, forcing schools shut and filling hospital wards with wheezing patients.

As winter descends, cooler air traps car fumes, factory emissions and construction dust close to the ground, fomenting a toxic brew of harmful pollutants that regularly exceed 30 times the World Health Organization safe limit.

The scourge is compounded as farmers like Singh — rushing to ready their fields for next season’s wheat crop — use fire to quickly and cheaply clear their land.

He knows slash-andburn farming is illegal and that doing so, year after year, helps sicken millions in the Indian capital and beyond.

But local authorities appear powerless to stop it and — looming health crisis or not in Delhi — the narrow window to plant for the winter harvest is closing.

“We have no other choice but to burn the straw,” Singh said in Ishargarh, a village in Haryana state, about 120 kilometers northwest of Delhi.

“We know the smoke pollutes the air. But it is the cheapest and easiest way to get rid of the (crop) residue.”

This smoke is already reaching Delhi, bringing a familiar sepia haze and a bad omen for officials wanting to avoid a third straight year of record-setting smog.

Deterrents, such as fines of up to $200 for farmers flouting the law, appear to have limited effect.

Satellite imagery shows countless spot fires already burning in Haryana and Punjab, two breadbasket states bordering Delhi.

S. Narayanan, from Haryana’s State Pollution Control Board, said 300,000 rupees ($4,100) in fines had been issued and fires were down 40 percent in some areas.

“But our intention is not only to take punitive action, but to educate the farmers,” he said.

Powerful farmers unions say many of the government’s ideas — such as encouraging farmers to sell straw to factories — overlook extra costs imposed on poor rural families.

“Who will bear the cost of transporting the straw? Farmers are also concerned about the pollution, but they are helpless,” said Sucha Singh from Bhartiya Kisan Union, a farmers’ rights group.

With smoke on the horizon, the Delhi government is squaring off for a fight with its neighbors.

It recently closed its last coal-fired power plant but the city’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal warned of another smog crisis if Punjab and Haryana failed to take “concrete steps” on crop fires.

“The entire region including Delhi will again become (a) gas chamber,” he said on Oct 12.

“People will again face difficulty in breathing. This is criminal.”