The farmers in the State of Punjab have commenced their annual exercise of burning stubble and choking the National Capital with thick smog.
As per reports, Punjab accounted for 147 farm fires between September 15 and 30. An additional 128 farm fires were recorded on October 1 and October 2. With 75 new incidents of farm fires on Monday (October 3), the number of cases has reached 350.
Amritsar and Tarn Tarn districts of Punjab have become major hotspots of farm fires, with the former accounting for 284 cases (80% of total incidents). Farmers in these two districts grow potatoes, which need to be sown in early October. As such, they begin burning paddy stubble from mid and late September onwards.
With farmers in Amritsar pacing up their usual activity, the air quality in the district has begun to deteriorate. On Monday (September 3), Amritsar’s AQI was 138 while it was 104, and 119 in Ludhiana and Jalandhar respectively.
Low wind movement, with unfavourable meteorological conditions, has trapped particulate matter on the air surface and is likely to wreak havoc in the Delhi-NCR region soon. According to Gufran Beig, the founder and project director at SAFAR (System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research), Delhi is likely to witness the impact of the farm fires from October 10 onwards.
There is, however, no hope of immediate resolution of the problem. Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB)’s member secretary, Krunesh Garg, informed that it would 4-5 years for a complete cessation of stubble burning activities.
“Crop diversification is not a long-term solution as biomass will be produced by other crops as well,” he said. “We need both in situ and ex situ solutions and they are already being implemented on the ground at the block and village level. But it will still take four or five years for a complete resolution,” he further added.
Discussion on farm fires dropped in Punjab Assembly
Despite the burning issue of farmer fires, the Punjab Assembly shelved the discussion on the topic. “The issue was not taken up as most of the sitting went into discussing the alleged usurping of SC scholarship funds to the tune of ₹64 crores by the previous Congress party government,” reported Hindustan Times.
Congress leader Pratap Singh Bajwa squarely blamed the Aam Aadmi Party-led-Punjab government for not discussing key issues such as stubble burning, GST and power shortages.
AAP MLA Inderbir Singh Nijjar has pinned the blame on the Opposition. “When the matter (of paddy stubble burning) was listed but the opposition does not allow the house to function smoothly and the matter lost in sloganeering by the Congress MLAs,” he claimed.
When AAP blamed the Punjab government for stubble burning menace
Back in 2018, AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal would blame the Punjab government for failing to control farm fires in the State. “If you see honestly, then there are just a few places of Haryana in it. In Punjab, stubble is being burnt in the entire area, especially Bathinda and Amritsar,” he had said back then.
However, the same district of Amritsar is a major hotspot of farm fires under the AAP regime. With the government having failed to contain the problem, people in Delhi are left with no hope but to pray for monsoon rains in the State of Punjab.
According to the data compiled by the Consortium for Research on Agroecosystem Monitoring and Modelling from Space (CREAMS), farmers took a break from stubble burning between September 24 and September 29 this year.
“We saw a spell from September 24 to 29, when no fire counts were recorded. This was mainly due to rains in Punjab and the fields remained wet for the next few days, so that paddy stubble could not be burnt,” informed Professor VK Sehgal of CREAMS.
As such, only late monsoon rains can only provide a breather to the residents of the Delhi-NCR. Such a spell is expected between October 5 and 9 this year. He said, “We may again see a spike in the activity from October 10 onwards or a little later than that.”
