Will Punjab 'action plan' falter as stubble burning returns with a 40% increase?

Chandigarh: In an action plan submitted to the Commission for Air Quality Management, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) ruled Punjab committed to an overall reduction in stubble burning cases by at least 50% in comparison to last year.

In 2022, of the total 69,615 stubble-burning cases recorded in six states, Punjab recorded the highest 49,922 stubble-burning cases, which is believed to have contributed to air pollution in the national capital and other parts of northern India.

Despite Punjab’s high claims to deal with what is now an annual public health crisis, stubble burning is back in the state with a substantial increase over last year.

Punjab recorded as many as 754 cases between September 15 and October 5 against 545 cases recorded during the corresponding period last year, thereby registering a 40% increase in the burning cases, revealed the data released by the union agriculture ministry’s Indian Agriculture Research Institute on October 6.

In other states like Haryana, UP, Delhi, Rajasthan and MP, cases stand at 190, 88, 01, 56 and 65 respectively.

Within Punjab, Amritsar (478) and Taran Taran (101) districts, which have early paddy harvesting season, recorded most of the stubble-burning cases so far.

The burning cases have been reported in Kapurthala (44) and Patiala (43) as well.

As per Punjab’s plan, it had also assured to eliminate stubble burning from six districts- Hoshiarpur, Malerkotla, Pathankot, Rupnagar, SAS Nagar (Mohali) and SBS Nagar,

As per the data, SAS Nagar(16), SBS Nagar (2), Hoshiarpur (2), Rupnagar (1) have already reported burning cases.

On why Amritsar recorded high burning cases so far, district agriculture officer Jatinder Singh Gill told Newsdrum that his department did a lot of campaigning on the ground, yet farmers did not pay any heed due to the shorter window between harvesting and sowing of the next crop.

"Despite this, we are encouraging farmers to use machinery-based solutions to get rid of stubble. Many of the violators have been penalized with fines as well," Gill said.

“We are still hopeful to achieve a target fixed by the state government to reduce stubble burning cases by 50%,” said Gill.

Cases to pick up soon

The situation is very challenging on the ground since, despite the flood situation, the area under paddy in Punjab did not come down and almost matched last year's figure of 31.60 Lakh hectares.

This means that the state will again witness high paddy production and a substantial generation of stubble, making it more prone to fires as the harvesting gathers pace in the coming weeks.

Dr Ravindra Khaiwal, who is an associate professor of Environment Health at Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, told Newsdrum that if one closely studies the stubble burning trend of the last one decade, a 10-15% decline is quite possible.

“But if the Punjab government is eying a 50% reduction in burning cases, this requires a huge effort at the ground level including the need to link the stubble with farmers’ income,” said Khaiwal.

Citing Haryana’s example, he said the state introduced an incentive scheme for not burning stubble, which effectively worked last year and is likely to play its role this year as well.

He said there is no cash incentive scheme in Punjab yet but it has focused on motivating the private combustion industry to buy stubble from the farmers, which is also appreciable.

“We have to see by the end of the season if steps taken by the Punjab government work since nearly 20 million tonnes of stubble are generated every year in Punjab,” he adds

All eyes will be on five districts — Sangrur, Bathinda, Firozpur, Muktsar, and Moga - which accounted for 44% of total fires in the state last year.

Punjab Agriculture Department officials are hopeful of positive results, saying that they have enough resources on the ground to stop the burning cases from increasing in the near future.

Under the Punjab government plan to check stubble burning incidents, the focus is on allotting 22,000 more crop residue management machines against a Rs 350-crore subsidy.

Since 2018, Punjab has distributed 1.17 lakh such machines so far.

But BKU (Ekta Ugrahan) general secretary Sukhdev Singh Kokrikalan told Newsdrum that everyone knows that crop residue machines did not help farmers deal with stubble burning. Yet, it is still being pushed as the primary solution.  

He said the cases of stubble burning are not likely to come down in Punjab unless there is a cash incentive to farmers or the Punjab government itself employs resources to clear their fields.  

Kokrikalan said farmers don’t want to fire the stubble after harvesting but they have no other option since it is expensive to handle it.

Per acre cost to manage stubble without burning it is to the tune of Rs 4000 to Rs. 5000. With farmers already battling rising farm input costs, this additional cost is unmanageable, forcing farmers to restore to firing, said Kokrikalan.