Fields On Fire

The pattern of burning crop residue in India is changing. The practice is no longer limited to the post-monsoon crop of rice or the northern states of Punjab and Haryana

JITENDRA, SHREESHAN VENKATESH, ISHAN KUKRETI, KUNDAN PANDEY, DEEPANWITA NIYOGI and POLASH MUKERJEE travel to five states across the country to study the trend.

ON APRIL 20, there was a piece of good news for residents of Delhi from the sky, literally. A satellite image released by the American space agency, NASA, showed that incidents of crop residue burning in Delhi’s neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana had significantly reduced compared to last year. But the joy was short-lived as subsequent images showed a spike in crop residue burning from the two states.

A year ago, when the Delhi government implemented the second edition of the odd-even vehicle restriction during April 15-30 to fight air pollution, the Central Pollution Control Board, to everyone’s surprise, found that the pollution levels had increased during the experiment. This put a question mark on the efficacy of the emergency measure. Clean air campaigners and members of the Environment Pollution (Prevention & Control) Authority (EPCA), a body appointed on the Supreme Court’s directive to oversee environmental issues in the National Capital Region, went through volumes of data to understand this paradox. That answer came from an image sent by a NASA satellite. The image showed that the smoke from crop residue burning in Punjab and Haryana had travelled to the national capital, causing the rise in air pollution.

“But farmers don’t burn the rabi wheat crop residue, because it is an important fodder. We knew then that there was widespread burning post-paddy harvest—from October end till mid-November each year. This was happening because farmers in Punjab and Haryana were caught in a vicious time cycle—they had to harvest rice and cultivate wheat in a space of 10-15 days. Rice straw was not a useful fodder, but we did not know about the burning of wheat residue,” explains Bhure Lal, former bureaucrat and now chairperson of EPCA. What then is happening? Why are farmers burning valuable fodder? Is this only about Punjab and Haryana? No.