First major litmus test for Bhagwant Mann govt as stubble burning season approaches 

Chandigarh: In July this year, Delhi chief minister and national convener of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Arvind Kejriwal announced a plan to provide a cash incentive of Rs 2,500 per acre to the farmers in Punjab for not burning stubble in the upcoming paddy harvest season.

However, the plan to incentivise farmers was only a proposal submitted to the Commission of Air Quality Management.  

As per the proposal, the BJP-led centre was asked to contribute Rs 1,500 per acre while the remaining Rs 1,000 was to be equally shared by Punjab and Delhi governments.

NewsDrum had reported that the plan is set to bite the dust.

As expected, the much-pubicised plan punctured last week after Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann announced that the centre has refused to commit necessary funds for incentivising farmers.

In a damage control exercise, Punjab Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal, in a statement released on September 11, announced to distribute 56,000 new subsidised machines under in-situ (with-in fields) management of stubble.

Lashing out at the Modi government for turning down the grant for the cash incentive scheme, Dhaliwal was confident that new stock of machines would reach small and marginal farmers.

In-situ machines, he believed, help farmers manage the stubble post paddy harvesting rather than putting it on fire.

This, as many studies and government data point out, has been the major cause of air pollution in the national capital, taking a toll on the health of millions before the onset of every winter. The rural and urban communities in Punjab are also not immune to this mess, studies too revealed. 

As Punjab reported 76,000 burning cases in 2021, a central body, System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR), revealed that the share of stubble burning in Delhi’s heavily polluted air touched a peak of 48% on November 7 last year.

In the past, the Delhi and Punjab governments were at variance with each other on this issue. What makes the situation unique for AAP is that it now heads the government both in Punjab and Delhi, thereby increasing its challenges manifold especially when the centre is not playing along.

Will machines help tackle the problem?

In placing reliance on in-situ machines, the Punjab government believes that they are moving in the right direction.

But it is equally true that 90,422 machines, already distributed to farmers between 2018 and 2022, a figure that the AAP minister himself shared in his official press release, made little impact in dealing with the problem. 

The stubble burning cases in these years have only increased from 50,000 in 2018 to 80,000 in 2021, a fact that the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India also highlighted in its July report. 

Jagjit Singh Dallewal, a farmer leader from Punjab’s Malwa region where cases of stubble burning are highest, asked, “Does the state have the capacity to provide these machines to each and every farmer in the state? Even if it does, how will farmers bear the cost to use these machines?” 

“Many such in-situ machines need high horsepower tractors, which a small and marginal farmer can’t afford to buy or source them on rent. In any case, this means an increase in his input cost, which the farmer is unable to bear due to already stagnancy in income level,” Dallewal told NewsDrum.

He then said of all the problems, the time gap between the harvesting of the paddy crop and the sowing of the next wheat crop has narrowed down over the years. This year, it is even shorter due to a delay in sowing. “In such a situation, farmers have very few options,” he added.

Farm economics expert Professor Kesar Singh Bhangoo told NewsDrum that farmers will not stop burning the stubble unless and until they are properly compensated through cash subsidy or there are enough opportunities in the market for immediate sale of stubble right after harvesting.

In the longer run, the only permanent solution is crop diversification through the MSP-based approach, for which the role of both state government and the centre is equally important. Right now neither the state nor the centre is serious about addressing the problem, he added. 

"In any case, none of these options are on the table this season as well. On the contrary, the machine-based approach is again promoted, which has failed in the past. It has only ended up benefits companies manufacturing them,” said Bhangoo.

Meanwhile, state agriculture minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal said in his press statement that several farmers failed to get the benefit of the subsidy on machines in the past due to corruption in the previous governments.

“A scam of Rs 150 crore had already surfaced, which is being investigated on priority by chief minister Bhagwant Mann, '' he added. 

He claimed the state government would take every possible step to stop stubble burning in the upcoming paddy harvesting season.

“500 such equipment will be sent to 154 blocks of the state. This will make sure that small farmers have access to these machines,” said the minister adding that a massive awareness drive would be launched in the rural belt of Punjab to exhort the farmers for adopting in-situ crop residue management wholeheartedly to manage the stubble.