Why court and ban failed to douse fire

Fatehgarh Sahib: Around two months ago, English farmer Mark Pettitt broke a 23-year-old British law and burnt the stubble of his harvested crop to reduce weeds and pests and boost crop growth for the next season.

Pettitt, of Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, hoped that other farmers would follow suit as, he said, attempts to eradicate weeds with chemicals had failed.

More than 6,000km away in Punjab's 12,581 villages, farmers like Harbans Singh have been burning their stubble twice a year for decades, ignoring a high court order, a state government ban, fines and the threat of arrest.

"This is the only way we know of destroying the straw to make room for the new crop," Harbans said at Uchcha Pind in Fatehgarh Sahib district, pointing to acres of blackened fields.

Farmers in Punjab and Haryana burn their stubble in May after harvesting wheat, and again in October-November after harvesting their paddy crop. This month, smoke from their fields has been blamed for a smog crisis in Delhi - some 450km from Amritsar, the farthest district - that has shut schools, diesel generators, construction and a thermal power station.

The situation, midwifed by a set of usual weather conditions, has drawn international attention to Harbans and his tribe, but the authorities had indeed been trying to fight stubble burning for the past couple of years.

On April 16, 2012, Punjab and Haryana High Court had banned stubble burning in both states and asked that the residual straw be used as cattle fodder.

"Since both paddy and wheat straw can be used as fodder, setting up of cattle feed industry can be encouraged, which in turn will provide another opening for absorption and use of the straw," the division bench of then Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Mahesh Grover had said.

But most of the farmers have been happily flouting the order, with the Akali Dal government jittery about cracking the whip lest it lose its rural vote bank.

"Unlike the wheat straw, the paddy straw is unfit for use as animal fodder," said Bachan Singh of Boparai Kalan in Ludhiana district.

"We have very little time left between harvesting the paddy and preparing for the wheat season. Burning is the easiest and cheapest method."

The farmers say they can't afford the alternative methods of removing straw with machinery or chemicals.

A study last year by the Punjab Remote Sensing Centre, a state government arm, found 1,413 incidents of stubble burning in Sangrur district followed by 1,291 in Ludhiana and 1,143 in Ferozepur.

Among the other districts where stubble burning is rampant are Fatehgarh Sahib, Moga, Bathinda, Jalandhar, Patiala, Kapurthala, Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Faridkot, Mansa and Gurdaspur.

A senior official in the Punjab agriculture department explained the steps the government had taken to curb stubble burning in the absence of a legislation banning the practice in the state.

One, the district authorities have been invoking Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which prohibits the assembly of more than four people, because stubble burning is usually done on a large scale with many farmers joining in.

"A violator can be jailed for six months and fined Rs 1,000 under Section 188 of the Indian Penal Code (which deals with disobeying a public servant's order)," the official said.

Two, following an order from the National Green Tribunal last December, the state has imposed an "environmental compensation fee" of Rs 2,500 to Rs 15,000, depending on the landholding of the farmer caught burning stubble. In Britain, Pettitt faced a maximum fine of £5,000 (about Rs 4.13 lakh).

The Punjab government has tried building awareness against the practice through loudspeaker-fitted vehicles. It has also announced financial incentives, whose details remain vague.

Government sources said that around 600 farmers had been fined this year and a handful arrested.

Haryana, which banned stubble burning in September 2013, has fared slightly better than Punjab.

"Till last week, 1,406 cases had been lodged against errant farmers. A sum of Rs 13.75 lakh has been recovered as penalty," a Haryana environment department official said.

Secretariat officials claimed a 21 per cent fall in stubble burning over the last three years. "In 2015, stubble burning took place on around 163,000 hectares compared with 168,900 hectares the year before," an official said.

Haryana's government has identified Ambala, Fatehabad, Jind, Kaithal, Karnal, Kurukshetra, Panipat, Sirsa, Sonepat and Yamunanagar districts as the hotbeds of stubble burning.

In poll-bound Punjab, the Delhi smog has become another issue for the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal and the challenger Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to lock horns over.

Punjab agriculture minister Jathedar Tota Singh today dismissed AAP-ruled Delhi's claims blaming Punjab's farmers for the air pollution in the national capital.

"Smoke from Punjab cannot reach Delhi. How could Chandigarh have remained unaffected if stubble burning caused this level of pollution?" he said.

Experts have attributed Delhi's plight to a rare combination of weather conditions: the virtual absence of surface wind for days, a change in the direction of winds flowing higher up in the atmosphere, and a fall in temperatures.

"The Arvind Kejriwal government has failed to check pollution in Delhi and is blaming Punjab's farmers," Singh said, rushing back from Delhi after a meeting between the Union environment minister and ministers from five states to discuss the smog.

Durgesh Pathak, the AAP's man in charge of Punjab affairs, said: "In some parts of Uttar Pradesh, farmers release water on the fields and then plough it instead of burning the straw. We will talk to experts and work out a solution."

Amarinder Singh, former chief minister and now Punjab Congress chief, blamed the Akali government.

"Punjab's farmers are facing a (debt) crisis. They don't have the means to use alternative methods to dispose of the residual straw," he said. "Unless agrarian reforms are introduced, the problem will continue."