Why farmers burn their fields in Punjab despite knowing that it worsens the fog over north India

On the evening of 7 November, a deep fog settled along the stretch of 250 kilometres between Sirsa and Gurgaon in Haryana. By ten in the night, it was thick enough to make travel almost impossible. In places, visibility shrank to not more than five metres.State transport buses cut their trips short. Cars, trucks and buses which kept moving towards Delhi did so cautiously, taking as long as six hours to cover a distance of 150 kilometres.

That night, the consensus among drivers and locals was that the fog was not natural but man-made. Not only does this part of India have several industrial units and power plants, in the months of October and November, farmers in Punjab burn fields to clear the crop stubble left after their kharif harvest. A sudden nip in the air that evening appeared to have trapped the emissions from both industry and burning fields close to the earth.

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M Rajshekhar

Fractured/Earth. Reportage on a planet without equitable or sustainable development.

Why farmers burn their fields in Punjab despite knowing that it worsens the fog over north India

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