DNA Edit: Finding Scapegoats - Farmers are not the only polluters in India

In the days gone by, the sight of approaching winter was always welcome in North India. That situation no longer holds. With winters setting in, the spectre of an overcrowded and polluted national capital covered in a thick haze of toxic smog has come to haunt citizens.

Experts have long concluded — somewhat incorrectly — that this dirty polluted smog is mainly the result of stubble burning by farmers in neighbouring Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan. It blithely ignores other major contributory factors like vehicular pollution, construction activities and a burgeoning population, all far deadlier than burning stubble.

A study conducted by the Ministry of Earth Sciences has estimated that vehicles and industries are the biggest contributors to particulate matter (PM) 2.5 emissions in Delhi-NCR. The study said that emissions from transport and industrial sectors have gone up by as high as 40 per cent and 48 per cent respectively in the country.

The construction industry is another big polluter, though given the unorganised scale of the sector in India, real data is hard to come by. But in a developed country like UK, which follows global best practices, the construction sector contributes 23 per cent to air pollution and 50 per cent to climate change.

On Tuesday, the Report of the sub-committee of the High Level Task Force on Prevention of stubble burning in Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh further reinforced this conclusion. The government report claimed that stubble burning is on the decline.

In Punjab’s 22 districts in 2017, it fell drastically when compared to 2016, the report said. In Sangrur, the worst-hit district in the state for instance, the number of fires estimated in 2016 stood at nearly 9,000, which had come down in 2017 to roughly 7,000, it claimed. But eyewitnesses and satellite images show that fires are already starting to burn in Haryana and western UP that neighbour Delhi.

The air quality index, which measures the concentration of poisonous particulate matter, has risen over 300 in some parts of the national capital in the last few days, according to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). The Board considers anything above 100 as unhealthy.

In 2017, as pollution levels climbed to more than 12 times, amid huge public outrage, the government introduced some measures aimed at curbing crop burning, the most notable of which was offering subsidies to farmers up to 80 per cent for buying machines like happy seeders. But farmers contend that despite subsidies, these machines remain expensive and beyond their reach. It is clear that there are no easy alternatives.

Despite penalties and bans in place by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on stubble burning, farmers have continued to defy. Some cultivators in Punjab have recently protested against the lack of government-promised compensation by posting stubble burning online in defiance of government and NGT orders. Clearly, it is the urban-rural divide showing up. What you cannot achieve in the cities, you expect the villages to do.