NI Bureau
Each year, when post-monsoon season sets in, a familiar haze settles over Delhi NCR. The sky turns grey, the air is choked, and air quality falls to hazardous levels. At the centre of the yearly crisis lies the stubble burning culture — the large-scale burning of farm waste by farmers in Punjab, Haryana, and parts of Uttar Pradesh. In spite of years of awareness campaigns, policy efforts, and technological interventions, stubble burning continues to suffocate the northern plains, leaving us with the question: why have the solutions not yet worked?
Stubble burning, or the burning of residual paddy stalks post-harvest, is an inexpensive and rapid way for farmers to prepare fields for planting the next sowing season, particularly the Rabi crop. The activity gets especially out of hand in October and November. As the winds reduce speed and temperature lowers, pollutants get trapped in the air, forming a poisonous smog that wafts over North India and very adversely affects air quality in Delhi NCR.
Governments and environmental organizations have, over the years, come up with several solutions to address this problem. From subsidies on crop residue management machinery to stubble’s alternative uses, the pressure has been relentless. However, the ground reality remains the same. The reason for the failure is the complexity of the problem — it is not only an environmental issue but a socio-economic one.
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One of the best-recommended solutions has been the dissemination of equipment like the Happy Seeder, Super Straw Management System (SMS), and Rotavators. These tractors enable farmers to deal with residue without its combustion. Still, the initial investment cost for the operation and maintenance of these machines is still out of reach for most small and marginal farmers. Subsidies or not, initial investment, absence of technical assistance, and the machine’s limited availability during the peak season also deter their large-scale adaptation.
Special hire centres (SHCs), established to offer machines on rent, are unevenly located and sometimes inaccessible to off-road villages. Moreover, backlogs in supply chain such as late delivery of equipment, the cost of fuel, and deficiencies in operators further hindered adoption.
A second method involved the application of bio-decomposer solutions — sprays that break down stubble into compost. Trials in some areas were promising, but results varied because of the soil type, weather, and incorrect application. Bio-decomposers require timing and technique, and too many farmers don’t get the sprays on time or are not trained to use them correctly.
An attempt has also been made to market alternative applications of stubble, like turning it into biomass fuel, cardboard, or animal feed. A number of startups and companies have expressed interest in using stubble as input. But there have been issues with collection, transportation, and storage that capped scalability. The harvest-to-sowing window is tight — usually a mere two or three weeks — which makes it hard to put in place supply chains for such efforts on a large scale.
Monetary incentives to dissuade burning have also had limited success. Cash payments or rewards for not burning paddy stubbles have been suggested, but fiscal constraints, bureaucratic delays, and inadequate monitoring have derailed these programs.
Also, enforcement of the policy is still a weak point. Penalties and fines on stubble burning are often not evenly enforced due to political sensitivity, partly. State governments are reluctant to take strong action against farmers as they are apprehensive of retribution by powerful rural voting blocks. The practice persists despite poor accountability checks with little deterrent.
What adds to the acuteness of the problem is the underlying stress of an agricultural economy trapped in a constricted crop cycle. The predominance of water-hungry paddy in Punjab and Haryana has been a legacy of policy decisions favouring food security and MSP procurement. Unless there is a fundamental shift toward crop diversification, farmers will continue to face tight harvest-to-sowing windows that encourage burning as the fastest field-clearing method.
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The problem is further compounded by lack of coordination between the states and the centre. Fragmented governance frameworks and inter-state blame games have been responsible for long delays in pursuing long-term planning. Though air pollution caused by stubble burning is a high proportion of the smog Delhi experiences in winters, it’s merely part of a large picture of pollution. It will weaken the efficiency of any standalone action to attack only it and overlook local emissions, vehicle pollution, and dust emissions from construction sites.
In reality, although there are many solutions on paper, most of them fail in practice because of a mix of economic, logistical, and policy challenges. The issue requires not just technology fixes but wider agrarian reform, better funding, and collaborative administration. Till then, Delhi NCR will have to suffer the same asphyxiating air year in and year out — a chronic crisis that is not solved but not insoluble either.
