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It's harvest season in Punjab, the traditional granary of India. Here, as across North India, farmers are gathering in their crop. Once the rice is in, it's time to prepare the land to sow the wheat and potatoes grown in winter. But this year, the normally festive harvest season has become a time of fear and anxiety.
In the past, North India's farmers got rid of their unwanted paddy straw and cleared the land for the next season by setting fields on fire. But burning more than nine million acres of rice crop residue is a major cause of the choking air pollution that engulfs India's capital, New Delhi, at the onset of each winter. Delhi now has some of the worst air of any big city in the world, dirtier even than the air in Beijing.
Now [? Delhi ?] has already become a gas chamber. And if you have this kind of episodic pollution, when such large-scale burning takes place, it's the entire northern belt, especially this part of the northern belt, gets very highly affected by pollution.
In response to mounting public concern about air quality, India's judiciary has ordered local authorities to put a complete stop to the burning of crop waste. Farmers have been warned that they could be fined, arrested, or even lose their crucial power connections for irrigation if they violate the ban.
[? Tarloch ?] [? Singhman ?] has 90 acres of paddy fields. He says his neighbours bought an expensive new mulcher that is supposed to shred the straw and turn it into the earth so the fields can be sown without burning. But he is not convinced that it will work effectively, and has no plans to buy his own.
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Smaller farmers say there is no way they can afford the expensive mulchers. With no other way to clear their land, they say they will have no choice but to defy the ban on burning. Experts also say it is unreasonable to expect farmers to bear the burden of tackling the problem alone.
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New Delhi's horrific air pollution has caused an uproar among the city's residents and damaged India's reputation around the world. The government is under mounting pressure to tackle the severe public health crisis, but persuading Punjab's farmers to adopt eco-friendly farming methods comes with a hefty price tag. Not only do farmers say they can't afford it, but they blame the government for doing next to nothing to help. Providing genuine relief from Delhi's choking winter smog will take more than tough talk from bureaucrats.
Amy Kazmin, Financial Times, Ludhiana.
