Farm fires: Provide cost-effective tech

The Delhi-National Capital Region’s luck with clean air — thanks to an intense and prolonged monsoon — seems to be coming to an end. On Sunday, Punjab reported this harvest season’s highest paddy straw burning instances, 2,895, even as their tally-to-date of 13,124 remained almost half of that in the corresponding period last year, this newspaper reported on Monday. Nearly 28,000 instances of stubble-burning were reported until October 31 in 2020. But there has been a significant spike in the farm fires in the state over the last three days, with daily cases hovering above 1,000. Punjab officials have said that farm fires are likely to increase in the next two weeks when the paddy harvest is expected to be completed in the Malwa region. Air quality forecasts have suggested that Delhi is headed towards an air emergency as stubble fires are expected to peak, coinciding with Diwali on November 4.

If this happens, then the Centre, Delhi’s neighbouring states, and, to some extent, the Delhi government, must be held responsible for failing once again to figure out a united approach to tackle this problem. The farm fires also show that the threat of financial penalty is not a deterrent for farmers to stop this practice. The Punjab Pollution Control Board has fined nearly 3,000 farmers a total of ₹25 lakh this year for stubble-burning. To wean farmers away from stubble-burning, the State needs to provide cost-effective solutions because the existing ones are expensive. The Indian State, however, seems to be waiting in the hope that one day farmers will heed its call of contributing to a safe environment, and desist from doing what seems economically practical for them.