MACHINES, MOTIVATION DID IT FOR NABHA’S KALLARMAJRI

NABHA:NABHA’S Kallarmajri village shot to fame when Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned it during his Mann Ki Baat radio address last year for attaining zero stubble burning status.

Kallarmajri’s success story started in 2014 when a young villager, Bir Dalvinder Singh, an Mtech, experimented with in-situ paddy straw management on a small portion of his farm and increased the area the next year on getting favourable results. While he was motivating other farmers to adopt the practice in 2016, financial commissioner MP Singh heard about him and the government zeroed in on the village as a pilot project.

The government made machinery available to the farmers that year and also provided an incentive of ₹800 per acre. Farm union leaders started pressuring farmers not to cooperate with the government, leading to tension.

The village of 60 landowners with 500 acres continue to abstain from burning paddy straw even without any incentive.

Gurnaam Singh, a farmer, says the input cost of fertilisers has come down due to the in-situ incorporation of the straw. Most villagers depend on balers due to the unavailability of other machines.

“Many want to incorporate the straw in the soil but the machines in the market are expensive and lack quality too,” says Bir Dalvinder Singh.

The villagers are proud to be pioneers of the campaign against stubble burning but call for easy availability of implements. Darshan Singh, another farmer, says the government must focus on neighbouring villages so that their negative impact does not affect farmers of the village.