Enforcing a ban will not end the menace of stubble burning, say, researchers

Mains Paper 3: Environment | Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment

From UPSC perspective, the following things are important:

Prelims level: Not much

Mains level: Winter air pollution caused by stubble burning

A recent study says that the enforcement of the ban on stubble burning isn’t an only feasible solution.

Ground zero reality

On average, about 20 million tonnes of straw are generated in Punjab, and they barely have two to three weeks to dispose them off and prepare the fields for the next crop.
Hence the popularity of deploying stubble-burning as a quick and cheap solution.
For about a decade now the Centre has held this practice responsible for the abysmal air quality in the capital in winter.

Ban not a solution

According to the team, the government’s efforts earmarking funds for specialized farming equipment (for straw management) or enforcing the state-led ban on the practice are unlikely to solve the problem.
Farmer cooperative groups a key link between government and farmers ought to be playing a more active role in educating farmers.
The main message is that farmers are not to blame (for the pollution crisis).
There are deeper causes beyond economic incentives or awareness about the health consequences of burning at play.

Govt. measures so far

The Centre has spent about ₹600 crore in subsidizing farm equipment via village cooperatives to enable farmers to access them and avoid stubble burning.
In 2018, Punjab had disbursed about 8,000 farm implements to individual farmers and set up 4,795 custom hiring centers, from where such machinery could be leased.
However, the success of these efforts has been mixed, even though stubble-fires in 2018 were fewer than in 2017 and 2016, according to satellite maps by independent researchers.

What do researchers say?

The researchers found that farmers who had bigger landholdings were more likely to burn straw.
Those who used harvesters (for cutting the straw) as opposed to manual labourers were more likely to engage in burning.
On average, the input costs of farmers who burned straw were about ₹40,000 per acre and those who didn’t about ₹25,000 per acre.
However the incomes of those who burned and those who didn’t were closer about ₹60,000 and ₹50,000 respectively.

Way Forward

There needs to be greater participation by village cooperatives in being able to impose social norms that would dissuade burners.
Only educating farmers about the monetary costs of burning stubble can address the environmental crisis triggered every year.