Stubble burning: Mann govt unable to deliver incentive promise
Denial from the state government came weeks after Centre rejected the proposal moved by the AAP governments in Punjab and Delhi for a joint incentive plan.
The Aam aadmi party (AAP) government in Punjab has washed its hands off its earlier promise of giving ₹2,500 per acre incentive to the paddy growers of the state for not burning the crop residue.
The denial from the state government came weeks after Centre rejected the proposal moved by the AAP governments in Punjab and Delhi for a joint incentive plan.
HT was first to report in July that the Punjab and Delhi governments had written to the Centre, seeking ₹1,500 per acre incentive to tackle farm fires – a major contributor to severe air pollution in the National Capital Region before the advent of winter. The remaining amount of ₹1,000 per acre was to be borne by the state governments.
It was proposed that the governments of Punjab and Delhi will make contribution each of ₹375 crore and sought an outlay of ₹1,125 crore from the Centre, taking the total to ₹1,875 crore.
Commenting on the matter on Thursday, Punjab’s agriculture minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal said: “We (Punjab and Delhi governments) have made a project for the larger benefit of the farmers but the Centre has rejected it”. “But,” he added, “the Punjab government is giving sufficient number of subsidised machines to the farmers for in-sit management of paddy stubble and also persuading them not to burn the crop residue”.
According to Dhaliwal, the total expenditure on subsidised machines will be ₹452 crore and 32,100 different types of machines will be given to the farmers.
Earlier, according to the officers in Punjab, the two governments (Punjab and Delhi) had decided that incase the Centre refused to contribute, they would pay farmers ₹1,000. “How could Delhi government pay when the Centre is not giving?,” the minister countered posing a question.
He further said that ₹500 per acre is very small amount and it would do no good to the farmers, as per acre expenditure on stubble management is much higher. In Punjab paddy yield per acre varies from 60 to 64 quintals. The previous Congress government has sought a bonus of ₹100 per quintal from the Centre to be given to the state farmers for not burning stubble.
This kharif season, paddy is sown over 30.84 lakh hectares (75.5 lakh acres) in Punjab. The state produces roughly 185 lakh tonne of paddy crop residue every year. Of this, narly half is managed in-situ (mixing the residue in the soil) and ex-situ (used as fuel) methods and rest is set ablaze.
“We knew this is going to happen sooner or later,” said Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) president Balbir Singh Rajewal adding that the AAP government makes big promises, then to backtrack.
In Delhi and its surrounding areas, pollution becomes the focal point of the discourse around public health every year at the onset of winter as the area becomes one of the most polluted regions in the world owing to a series of factors such as stubble burning by neighbouring states, emissions from millions of vehicles, construction and road dust. After the paddy harvest, the window for rabi (wheat) sowing is very short. The farmers prefer to burn the stubble as a cheapest method to ready their farms for rabi sowing.
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Atleast 14 cases of paddy stubble burning were reported from Amritsar (11) and tarn Taran (3) on Thursday. The Punjab state remote sensing centre has started monitoring of stubble burning case from today.
Krunesh Garg member secretary Punjab pollution control board disclosed this as a uniform practice of monitoring to be followed by the all paddy producing states – Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.
He adds that the commission for air quality management has mandated a standard operating procedure wherein a system has been developed to verify the stubble case reported by the satellite. During the kharif harvest of 2021 71,246 cases of stubble burning were reported.
