Stubble burning: Will it be different this time?

A significant containment of the annual malaise will help us breathe easy

As the paddy harvest begins in the north Indian plains around this time of the year, the entire region dreads its consequences. The harvest marks the return of stubble burning, which releases clouds of toxic smoke, heightening air pollution levels, particularly over the national capital, Punjab and Haryana. Pollution regulators have already spotted the season’s first 61 cases of fire from Haryana and Punjab. It could well be seen as the precursor of what lies ahead. After all, 40,150 cases of stubble fires were reported from Punjab alone in 2017, between September 27 and November 9. Will things be different this time around? Already unfolding on the ground are strategies seeking to address the root of the problem that stems from the lack of economical alternatives with farmers to tackle the stubble, forcing them to take an easy, but ecologically disastrous, option of setting them alight.

A key driver is the Centre’s Crop Residue Management Scheme, which hopes to educate farmers and equip them with affordable mechanised substitutes to deal with stubble in ecobeneficial ways. It entails 50% subsidy to individual farmers and 80% to cooperatives or groups for buying machines for in-situ management of stubble in the troubled spots of Punjab and Haryana. This approach, in the government’s reckoning, and rightly so, is a sustainable alternative to offering the bonus over and above the minimum support price that farmers’ bodies in Punjab are demanding as an incentive for not burning paddy.

A better-than-expected response to the scheme, bolstered by an awareness campaign, has led to optimism among the authorities that the scale of paddy fires this season will be smaller than last year. A significant containment of the stubble smokestacks will help the region breathe easy.