We Didn’t Start The Fire

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              "text": "On 30 October, Delhi’s air quality rapidly declined to a category officials describe as severe. The following days saw Delhi’s air pollution index swing between poor, very poor, severe and hazardous. A large part of the blame is ascribed to farmers in the state of Punjab, who burn crop residue at this time of the year. While no one wants to take on the most powerful pollution victims in India, farmers—who have put rice, wheat and pulses on the plates of Delhi’s residents for decades—are sick of taking the blame.",
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              "text": "Ishan Tankha",
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              "text": "Crop-burning and its current scale can be traced to agricultural practices implemented during the Green Revolution of the 1970s. It fostered a high dependence on rice and wheat. The varieties introduced were high-yielding but slow to mature, which means the gap between the harvest of the summer crop and sowing of the winter crop drops to less than a month. Delayed sowing of the summer crop in the month of June, due to drastically depleted water tables—a direct result of the Green Revolution—further brings down this window to 15 days. This leaves small farmers, with no access to expensive machinery, no option but to burn their crop residue to have their fields ready in time for the winter cycle.",
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              "text": "Ishan Tankha",
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              "text": "“When the Green Revolution began, the government was sending in their people saying you must use this fertiliser, and people like my grandfather would refuse, saying my ground would get addicted. But obviously, because there’s a higher yield, you get farmers addicted to a certain way of being. Then 30 years later, you expect them to change?” Bohar Singh Dhaliwal, the district president of the Bharatiya Kisan Union—a local farmers’ union in Punjab’s Sidhupur village—said.",
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              "text": "During the harvest period, if a farmer uses a combine harvester, the process usually leaves a foot of root, and chopped-up stalk that’s sprayed everywhere. He must then plough it back into the land, level it, water it and wait for it to dry. “If you only have 15 days to do this, it is easier and cheaper to burn,” Shivinder Singh Brar, a former government school teacher and general secretary of the Consortium of Indian Farmers Association, said.",
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              "text": "“We’re happy to stop burning; farmers are stubborn but not stupid,” Parnam Singh, a Bharatiya Kisan Union member, said. “It’s not like we don’t understand the problem. If it gets smoky there it also gets smoky here, but where is the support?”",
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              "text": "“It’s still the same crops, same seeds, so why would the burning stop?” Shivinder Singh Brar said, alluding to the fact that it was the Green Revolution that got them dependant on slow-maturing crop varieties. Estimates say that over 90 percent of nearly 40 million tonnes of straw from paddy and wheat left behind in Punjab’s fields is burned.",
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              "text": "Access to machinery speeds up the harvest. In May 2018, the central government announced subsidies for buying and hiring farm implements. As part of the scheme, the government set up Custom Hiring Centres to help farmers access this equipment. But the machinery is still prohibitively expensive and only accessible to large farmers who have the ability to pay and is not enough to clear stubble in a 15-day window. Moreover, farmers claimed each time a subsidy is announced, it is met with a hike in the price of implements, thereby negating the entire exercise.",
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              "text": "Dhaliwal, the BKU district president, summed up the solutions desired by the farmers: “Why don’t you make faster-yielding varieties more easily available and give us more biogas plants or allow sowing by June 1st?”",
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              "text": "The farmers’ unions have suggested that while the government organises itself and arranges machine subsidies, “we are ready to reduce the burning to 25 percent,” by incinerating only the sprayed straw and not the root. “To say don’t burn at all is way too much,” Parnam Singh said. “We pollute only once a year, but people in Delhi, industries pollute all the time.”",
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              "text": "Ishan Tankha",
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              "text": "Referring to the government’s selective enforcement of the National Green Tribunal’s rulings and incoherence of the subsidy policy, Dhaliwal said, “In this current situation, you’re asking a small farmer spend money for a larger cause, when we have already been making sacrifices since the seventies to deal with food shortage.”",
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Walk through the shorn rice fields of Faridkot district, in Punjab, and all that remains is a cloud of smoke and a ring of fire. Punjab’s fields of gold are ablaze again and the fire starter has disappeared. You could look at satellite images, read numbers off an air-quality app or take a whiff of Delhi’s air. On 30 October, just as the World Health Organisation concluded that “air pollution is the new tobacco,” Delhi’s air quality rapidly declined to a category officials describe as “severe”, for the first time this season. It has since hit the “severe plus emergency” category. But the truth of who is to blame for another season of crop-burning and spiking particulate matter numbers across north India is not easy to determine. With the growing chorus against crop-burning, farmers—who have put rice, wheat and pulses on the plates of Delhi’s denizens for decades—are sick of taking the blame.

The farming practices encouraged in the 1970s, during the Green Revolution, are one major facet of the annual crop-burning that adds to the pollution build-up in north India between mid-October to mid-November—the time period for harvesting the summer crop and sowing the winter crop. “When the Green Revolution began, the government was sending in their people saying you must use this fertiliser … because there’s a higher yield, you get farmers addicted to a certain way of being,” Bohar Singh Dhaliwal, the district president of the Bharatiya Kisan Union—a local farmers’ union in Punjab’s Sidhupur village—said. “Then 30 years later, you expect them to change?” Farmers such as Shivinder Singh Brar, a former government school teacher and general secretary of the Consortium of Indian Farmers Association, said that the Green Revolution made them dependant on the crop-burning routine. “It’s still the same crops, same seeds, so why would the burning stop?”

Farmers claimed that there are multiple preventive measures that can bring down crop-burning and the scary statistics, but blamed the government for patchy implementation. Crop diversification, which would break this harvest-sowing cycle, has failed in the region as the state provides Minimum Support Prices for rice and wheat only. Similarly, attempts to bring in early-maturing and equally high-yielding rice varieties, which would spread out the harvest-sowing time period and prevent farmers from resorting to crop burning, were executed in a piecemeal manner to have any discernible impact.

The Green Revolution has also drained the water table, prompting the state to delay sowing the summer crop. “If you sow late, you’ll harvest late. Then you don’t have the time to do the things besides harvest,” Dhaliwal said. This directly contributes to the crop-burning practice as the harvesting leaves root and chopped-up stalk everywhere; this must then be ploughed back into the land, levelled, watered and dried. “If you only have 15 days to do this, it is easier and cheaper to burn,” he explained. Access to machinery could speed this up and the central government announced subsidies for buying and hiring farm implements in May 2018. However, several farmers in Faridkot claimed each time a subsidy is announced, it is met with a hike in the price of implements and the machinery available is severely inadequate to clear stubble in a 15-day window. Moreover, large farmers, who avail subsidies, have been found to be selling equipment.

Biogas plants, which convert biomass, or crop residue, to energy, could turn things around in Punjab. There has been a policy-wise move towards an increased number of bio-gas plants. However, the policy seems to have been dreamt up in isolation, with the state power board terminating power purchase agreements with biogas plants, saying it has a power surplus, is weighed down by a power subsidy to farmers and cannot afford to buy biogas power at current tariffs.

“We’re happy to stop burning, farmers are stubborn but not stupid,” Parnam Singh, another Bharatiya Kisan Union member, said. “If it gets smoky there, it also gets smoky here, but where is the support?” The unions have even suggested that while the government gets its act in order, farmers are ready to reduce the burning to 25 percent. “To say don’t burn at all is way too much,” Singh said. “We pollute only once a year, but people in Delhi, industries pollute all the time.”