Framers in Punjab and Haryana harvest their crops using sickles every year which ends up with huge pile of crop stubble in the fields. The government has been urging farmers to use considerable measures for disposal of stubble however, farmers prefer burning them as it happens to be the most inexpensive means.
However, the incumbent Delhi government has been trying its best to curb the ever rising air pollution and also sought help from the Central government to direct neighbouring state such as Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh to take preventive measures to control crop residue burning. Earlier this month, Delhi environment minister Imran Hussian wrote a letter to Union Minister of Environment Harsh Vardhan regarding the same.
“An urgent high-level meeting of chief ministers of various states including NCR may be convened to review the effort made to control air pollution,” Hussain wrote in his letter. From the year 2021, ‘speciated air pollution data’ from NSASA's Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols (MAIA) satellite will be used by Delhi researchers to figure out how the health impact of dust pollution differs from that of crop burning.