When one tampers with nature and the systems developed through centuries of conventional wisdom, the outcomes are disastrous. The most worrisome public health catastrophe, affecting more than 30 crore Indians, has been brought on in recent years by air pollution in Delhi and north India.

India’s air quality, which was never particularly good to begin with, tends to deteriorate in the autumn, when farmers burn straw left over from their rice harvests to make room for new planting.

You will find more infographics at Statista

The pattern continued this fall, but the most recent air quality readings were particularly dire. This year, pollution levels have reached over 20 times the safe limit, forcing people indoors and halting construction activities and vehicular restrictions.

The widespread burning of stubble by farmers in Punjab and Haryana is the main cause of this extreme air pollution in north India. However, the issue of air pollution brought on by crop waste burning has gotten much worse recently, especially in the previous 7-8 years. But for generations, farmers in Punjab and other places have burned crop residue to rid their fields of the remnants of the Kharif crop. So why did it start to dominate air pollution in recent years? Has anything changed?

Yes. Due to the 2009 Punjab Preservation of Subsoil Water Act’s adoption, the paddy sowing season had to be changed forcibly, which caused the shift. Farmers are forbidden by this law from planting paddy before May 10 and transplanting paddy before June 16 each year.

No legal or civil remedy is available and violations result in penalties of Rs 10,000 per hectare. Farmers typically harvest the Rabi crop by the end of March or the beginning of April, and the paddy transplanting is finished by May 15. However, this Punjab Act has added more than a month to the sowing season’s delay. Due to Paddy’s need for 120 days following transplant, the harvest season is now from mid-September to mid-October. Haryana has also adopted legislation that is comparable to the Act. Additionally, this has caused the burning of stubble to be delayed by a month.

The Kharif crop’s stubble has been burned for ages, but the fast-moving reversing monsoon winds heading towards the Bay of Bengal quickly transport the pollutants with little influence in north India. The severe air pollution is, however, being brought on by the one-month delay in the sowing, harvesting, and burning cycles because, by the time crop stubble is burned in October, the wind pattern has totally altered and there is no receding monsoon wind to clear the air. Additionally, a new meteorological phenomenon emerges by the middle of October, a number of low-pressure systems form in the Bay of Bengal, bringing rain to the coastal areas and a significant amount of water vapour to the upper troposphere, which slowly drifts into the Northern plains and produces early winter dew.

The month’s delay causes a massive smoke, haze, and moisture sphere because the presence of water vapour prevents smoke from rising. Additionally, a characteristic anticyclonic wind pattern causes standstill weather, which contributes to high pollution levels in north India throughout the winter.

Is Stubble Burning The Only Cause?

According to data analysis by the Delhi-based Center for Science and Environment (CSE), which specialises in environmental research and activism, a significant portion of the local air pollution in Delhi was brought on by vehicle emissions.

Vehicle emissions may have contributed about 51% to Delhi’s PM2.5 levels, according to CSE’s study of data from the local sources of pollution. Local sources allude to sources found in the city. Among these local sources, residential sources contributed 13% of the total, and industries contributed 11%. PM2.5 emissions from construction operations accounted for about 7% of all PM2.5 emissions, followed by 5% each from the energy and garbage burning industries. About 4% of the PM2.5 values were caused by road dust. The analysis also found that Delhi’s local sources caused around 32.9% of the pollution in the city. The remaining share came from NCR districts (32.8 %), other districts (25.8%) and biomass burning in the neighbouring states (9.5%).

Notable efforts related to monitoring air quality have been made in recent years. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MOEFCC) and the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, created the National Air Quality Index (NAQI), a tool which makes the availability of air quality data accessible and transparent. Also, the MOEFCC in the year 2017 notified Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) in order to respond to pollution episodes across Delhi NCR. Unfortunately, despite all these efforts, our pollution sources have exponentially increased compared to our ability to mitigate them. 

Controlling air pollution needs systemic reforms and effective implementation. There is an urgent need for Delhi and its nearby regions to switch to cleaner and renewable sources of energy for both industry and transport. India has the advantage of corporate social responsibility which is mandated by law. The corporations can earmark some of their two percent corpus and use it for preventive and curative measures. Corporations can leverage GRAP and Air Quality Indexes by partnering with state governments and working with civil society organisations to spread awareness about air pollution. As a solution to stubble burning, the respective state governments can issue subsidies and incentives for farmers and encourage them to use less polluting techniques, or could help them in procuring the machinery to do so. The corporations can, as part of their CSR activity, fund technology incubators and research institutions to develop technology to address the issue of crop stubble.

The primary objective of new age enterprises must be to promote sustainability. More public-private partnerships are needed now more than ever to use the experience of both sectors. The business and public sectors can work together to develop solutions that will help reduce pollution to a manageable level.