A tale of fire and water: Why Punjab’s paddy fields simmer

“For farmers like me, every single rupee counts,” says the 67-year-old.

The fires consume the paddy stalks mercilessly, scorch the earth and send up dense, black plumes of smoke. These dark clouds travel hundreds of kilometres southeast, from Singh’s paddy fields in Dhanansu village in Punjab to the packed alleyways of the National Capital Region (NCR). They sheath Delhi and its adjoining cities in a dome of grey.

“The smoke affects our families and children first. They are also exposed to it and suffer from breathing problems. Who wants to burn paddy straw? It’s our compulsion,” said Bhag Singh, a farmer from a village in Tarn Taran district along the border with Pakistan.

Still, the disaster plays itself out like clockwork, year after year after year. A raft of interventions by judicial bodies have largely failed and administrative responses have been meek. This year, for example, repeated raps by the Supreme Court have failed to stem the rising numbers of fire.

At the heart of this recurrent mess is a complex web of crop cycles, logistics, economics and politics that can only be untangled by deep-rooted interventions. Cultivators in Punjab argue that they are hostage to financial decisions and underline that only administrative support can catalyse change. Local authorities, on the other hand, say they’re hamstrung.

A stubble cocktail

The rabi season, or winter crop cycle, kicks in around mid-October every year. As this cycle approaches, cultivators in India’s food-bowl states must rapidly clear their farmland of all remnants of the kharif crop. The narrow window leaves them with little time to manually up root all the paddy stalks. Many farmers argue that setting their fields ablaze is the quickest choice – a process that would otherwise take days is wrapped up in hours.

However, at the same time, the direction of winds that blow across northern and northwestern India changes. Till early October, winds over this region, primarily NCR, blow in from the east or southeast, bringing in warm winds from Uttar Pradesh and parts of Haryana. However, winter heralds itself once the pattern shifts direction and winds blow in from the northwest instead. These winds not bring in the chill from the northern mountains, but also carry millions of tonnes of dark smoke from Punjab’s burning paddy fields laced with carbon dioxide, ash and other micropollutants.

But, experts pointed out, this cocktail is a relatively recent phenomenon.

In 2009, Punjab introduced the Preservation of Subsoil Water Act, a sweeping law that aimed to conserve the state’s rapidly depleting groundwater reserves by shrinking the window for paddy sowing, transplantation and irrigation. According to the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM), a body formed by the Union government in 2021 to fix north India’s pollution crisis, a kilogram of rice consumes 5,337 litres of water. In turn, water consumption during a single paddy season touches 14 billion cubic metres, extracted with the help of 1.4 million tubewells, which comprise 73% of all irrigation supply. Just 27% is, hence, sourced from rainfall or canals.

Read more: Delhi pollution: Gopal Rai claims rise in stubble burning in these two states

This kharif season, paddy was cultivated over 3.2 million hectares (eight million acres), with the overall grain yield expected to touch 2.3 million tonnes, which will produce 2.2 million tonnes of stubble. Of these, the Punjab pollution body estimates that two million tonnes of stray will be set ablaze.

The Act essentially pushed back rice sowing from mid-May to mid-June and shifted paddy harvesting to late October from September. Before the law was in place, farmers were able to harvest their kharif crop and clear their fields well before October. The Act, however, shrunk this space.

“So, after the law postponing paddy cultivation was passed, the number of paddy stubble fires skyrocketed,” said Raghbir Singh, a farmer from a village near Baghpurana in Moga district.

Paddy dependence

Others point to the state’s over dependence on paddy cultivation, a pattern that took root during the Green revolution.

Kahan Singh Pannu, a farmer who was Punjab’s agriculture secretary from 2013 to 2014 and 2018 to 2020said, “The area under paddy has increased over the years, which means more straw, more fires and more smoke.”

Another issue, he pointed out, was that large tracts of the state’s fields were on lease, putting cultivators under onerous repayment burdens that force them to take drastic measures and maximise output.

“The tiller who pays the owner rent tries to cut input costs. For these people, stubble management is the last thing on their minds,” he said.

Piara Singh, who owns three acres of land and tills another 11 on a lease, agreed. “The owner of the plots charges the entire lease amount, whether or not I burn stubble. It takes two to three weeks to prepare the farm for wheat cultivation, which is ideally done between mid-October and mid-November,” he said.

Even a week’s delay can hit hard, he added. “The yield falls by two to three quintals for a delay of a week.”

Thousands of fires, plumes of smoke

The fires number in the thousands. Last year, Punjab recorded 36,632 across the state between September 15 and November 15. It clocked 49,922 in 2022, 71,159 in 2021, 83,002 in 2020 and 55,210 in 2019. Government and CAQM officials attributed last year’s dip to the use of subsidised machines for on-site and increased surveillance.

This year, the state has already recorded2,356 fires. The highest (496) come from Amritsar district.

“For the current kharif harvest, our target was to bring farm fires to zero, which could not be achieved as fires have started. We hope to drastically cut down the fires this year as compared to the previous season,” said Punjab’s agriculture director Jaswant Singh.

State agricultural produce markets have already receivedfour milliontonnes of paddy so far. As the harvest progresses in the coming weeks, farmers and authorities expect the number of fires to skyrocket, even though authorities say 8,000 officers have fanned out across 12,700 villages to snuff the blazes out.

But repeated efforts have come to naught.

Poor oversight

According to Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) officials, teams face stiff opposition from entire villages when they try to penalise even individual farmers, with some personnel even taken hostage on occasion.

“To avoid the situation escalating, police personnel are sent with the teams monitoring the farm fires,” said a PPCB who asked not to be named.

State government agencies have also started imposing environmental compensation, imposing a cess on farmers burning paddy stubble and red-listing their names on revenue records – a step that bars people from selling or mortgaging their plots or availing any farm loans. But the latter step has so far yielded few results.

“The red entries used to be a mere formality, but this time the instructions are clear — bring them on record and take action”, said a tehsildar posted in a subdivision of Sangrur district.

Farmers said a red entry had little impact on their lives.

“I got three red entries in previous years on different plots. But it did not affect me in any way and I was able to get crop loans on those plots,” said Pritam Singh of Bhawanigarh village in Sangrur.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government also set aside ₹500 crore to purchase machines that help control paddy stubble. Officials said farmers have been given 14,000 machines at subsidised rates.

They say that farmers have been given more than 137,000 machines since 2018 at an overall subsidised cost of ₹1,370 crore. Government agencies have started punitive action by imposing environmental compensation on 57 defaulting farmers, 30 red entries in revenue records and imposed ₹1.5 lakh as environmental cess.

Experts said the subsidised machines farmers were given covered only a fraction of the sweeping swathes of land under paddy cultivation in the state.

“What’s the plan for farmers who have not received machines or those who can’t afford the machines?” asked Hakam Singh of village Adaltiwala in Patiala.

But despite a dozen state departments, CAQM and the National Green Tribunal being involved, Punjab’s fields continue to burn. Even the Supreme Court recently flayed CAQM efforts in tackling air pollution, saying only “actions”, not “meetings” will help solve the problem.

Suresh Kumar, a retired Indian Administrative Services (IAS) officer from Punjab who headed the state’s agriculture department for five years, said “temporary measures” will only go so far.

“Putting a stop to farm fires needs systematic investment and planning… Right now, these are ad-hoc policies that can’t work for long,” he said.

Others point to political exigencies. “This is a political problem because political parties are seeking compensation from the Centre for the farmers to support the efforts to stop farm fires,” said BS Dhillon, former vice-chancellor of Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) in Ludhiana.

But, he added, “if farmers are expected to do additional work, they will need to be paid.”

Experts also say that easing Punjab’s dependence on water-intensive paddy would help.

Nek Singh, a farmer from Khokh village near Patiala, said there was little guarantee that the state government would procure other crops as they do with paddy.

“If the government assures us and makes arrangement for procuring alternative crops such as oilseeds and pulses, farmers will have no problem to shift,” he said.

Balbir Singh, a farmer from Dharamgarh village in Fatehgarh Sahib, who sows wheat in the rabi season, followed by early premium basmati, potato and then maize, stressed the latter crop consumed more water than paddy.

“Very often farmers are unable to sell potatoes and basmati prices are also volatile, so it is very difficult to make alternative crops a practical option,” he said.

And even as authorities struggle for wiggle room, NCR’s residents must pay the cost. And farmers say relieving that burden is not theirs alone.

“How much more a farmer can be burdened,” said Raghbir Singh from Moga.

“We have the onus of food security and now environmental conservation has been tagged in,” he said. “It’s difficult to balance the two”.