Addressing north India’s burning issue sustainably

#GS-03 Environment and Ecology, Pollution

What is Stubble Burning:

Stubble burning is the practice of intentionally setting fire to the straw stubble that remains after grains, such as rice and wheat, have been harvested.
This is seen as an easier and cheaper method of removing paddy crop residues from the field to sow wheat from the last week of September to November.
Stubble burning has been one of the prime reasons for air pollution over the national capital region (NCR).

The root cause of stubble burning can be traced back to the 1960s-70s when Green Revolution transformed the way agriculture was practised, especially in Punjab and Haryana.
The economics of high-yielding varieties of paddy and wheat, supported by a guaranteed buyer (the government) and minimum support prices led to a crop duopoly focusing only on wheat and rice.
This duopoly was further cemented by the policy moves in subsequent decades, which included the introduction of subsidies for electricity and fertilizers, and ease of access for credit in agriculture.
Later the Punjab and Haryana governments introduced laws around water conservation in order to address the growing water crisis.
These laws encouraged farmers to look to the monsoon rather than groundwater to irrigate their crops.
This resulted in a shortened harvesting season which forced farmers to rapidly clear their fields between the kharif and rabi crops.

A series of short-term ex-situ and in-situ solutions have been rolled out by the Union and State governments.
In-situ solutions include happy seeders and bio-decomposers, while the ex-situ solutions include collecting and using stubble as fuel in boilers, to produce ethanol, or to simply burn away alongside coal in thermal power plants.
Economic incentives to reduce burning have also been tested with limited success.

We need to substantially reduce the amount of paddy being grown in the region and replace it with other crops that are equally high-yielding, in-demand, and agro-ecologically suitable such as cotton, maize, pulses and oil seeds.
The governments also need to build trust with farmers to ensure they are seen as partners (rather than perpetrators) and provide them the financial support necessary.
At a policy level, it also requires recognising that agriculture, nutrition, water, the environment, and the economy are all deeply intertwined in the era of the Anthropocene.
Therefore, taking the long view on this would also mean establishing a mechanism for intersectoral policymaking that aligns our goals for sectoral policy within the broad frame of sustainable development we wish to follow.