Delhi fights a burning issue
GOVERNMENT PLEADS WITH FARMERS TO HELP BATTLE POLLUTION PROBLEMS
Farmers are being urged not to torch their fields, a key source of pollution in the capital |
It’s not yet winter, but even as the sun rises, the fog does not disappear and there are visibility issues. It’s getting worse day after day. For people like me the situation is worse, as we have to suffer smog and pollution for hours on end.” Manoj Kumar, 47 | cab driver, Delhi My night shifts are becoming a nightmare. Travelling to-andfro from home in Delhi to office is affecting my health. Due to pollution, I have developed breathing issues and constantly have a bad throat and feel fatigued.” Rajith Sahni, 26 | BPO executive, Noida
I curse the day we decided to come back to India from Hong Kong. Nowhere in the world is the situation as bad. Our fouryear-old daughter has become asthmatic and my in-laws have breathing issues. Air purifiers in rooms have been of no help.” Manisha Dubey, 32 | housewife
All it takes is a match. One by one, in the coming days, farmers in this compact village in northern India will set fire to the straw in their freshly harvested rice fields. Pungent gray smoke will rise into the air. Then it will drift southeast towards New Delhi, thickening the smog that has turned India’s capital into the most polluted major city in the world.
Just weeks remain before the 29 million people living in greater Delhi are plunged into their annual battle with extreme air pollution. Each November the past two years, the level of particle pollution considered most harmful to human health has spiked to more than 30 times the limit prescribed by the World Health Organisation. The air in the city remains hazy and dirty throughout the winter.
Action plan
The Indian government has a new action plan in place: It just shuttered the last coal-fired power plant in Delhi and recently banned the use of certain industrial fuels within the city. On days when the pollution soars, other measures will kick in, such as a halt to all construction activities and a ban on trucks entering Delhi.
But turning the tide in the fight against pollution will depend on efforts such as the one now under way in the state of Punjab, the powerhouse of Indian agriculture. There the authorities are engaged in a race to persuade farmers not to torch their fields, urging them to shun a tactic that is cheap and efficient in readying the area for the next crop but that is also a key source of pollution.
The smog that blankets northern India each winter is a toxic mix of car exhaust, construction dust and industrial emissions that settles over the region as wind speeds and temperatures drop. What makes it unusual is the addition of smoke from thousands of fires as farmers hurry to switch their fields from fully grown rice to newly planted wheat in the span of a month.
“The uniqueness of the smog season is precisely because crops are being burned at an unheardof scale anywhere else in the world,” said Siddharth Singh, author of the forthcoming book The Great Smog of India.
According to a governmentsponsored study, stubble burning contributed 26 per cent of the most harmful particulate matter to Delhi’s winter pollution during 2013 to 2014; another found it contributed as much as 50 per cent on certain days during the burning season.
The task of dissuading the farmers from burning is a microcosm of India’s broader pollution challenge. Unlike China’s authoritarian regime, which has made strides in recent years in stemming air pollution, India must operate within the constraints of a democratic system. Reducing the sources of pollution in India involves confronting entrenched interests, overcoming political rivalries and motivating people to change their behaviour.
Farmers are a powerful constituency in Punjab and in other straw-burning states such as Haryana, and there are roughly 2 million farmers in Punjab alone. “The number of farmers is so large that we cannot take very harsh measures,” said Kahan Singh Pannu, agriculture secretary in Punjab.
Gurtej Singh, 42, said he had farmed — and burned — these fields for more than two decades. He agreed that setting fires is bad for the environment but said that dealing with the straw using other methods is more expensive and time-consuming. “Small farmers can’t do it,” he said.
He rejected the blame for Delhi’s pollution, a common theme among farmers in the area. Pollution in the capital “is because of vehicles and industry, not because of us,” he said.