Delhi may finally get rid of the stubble smoke drifting in from the neighbouring States of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh and polluting its air. The Centre on Tuesday approved a financial package of Rs 779 crore to enable purchase of improvised farm machines that will help remove the crop stubble and simultaneously convert it into manure for the next rabi crop.
The proposal was made by a High level Task Force constituted by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change in a report submitted to the Supreme Court on Wednesday. Justices Madan B lokur and Deepak Gupta, who are dealing with a PIl on the menace of stubble burning, asked the Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) to respond on the report by next Monday. Stubble burning often led to clouds of smog enveloping Delhi’s atmosphere, making it difficult to breathe.
The high-level committee invited proposals from Punjab and Haryana on the issue of crop burning and took considered suggestions made by a Task Force of NITI Aayog and a presentation by Additional Secretary, Department of Rural Development. Although there was a drop recorded in crop burning incidents in 2017 as compared to the earlier years, the chief reasons for this practice was seen to be the short window period between harvesting of paddy crop (mid-September to mid-November) and sowing of rabi crop, mainly comprising wheat and potato.
Environmentally sustainable methods to remove crop stubble proved to be costly for farmers and this dissuaded them from purchasing improvised farm equipments such as Happy Seeder that costed several lakhs. The Committee noted that crop burning also resulted in loss of plant nutrients and killed beneficial soil bacteria and soil hardening. Considering various methods to remove the stubble, the Committee concluded that Happy Seeder helped sow seeds using paddy straw as mulch (manure) was popular in Punjab.
Based on requirement for farm equipment meant for removing stubble, the total cost for Punjab, Haryana for farm machineries to tackle crop burning based on current prices came to approximately Rs 779 crore (Rs 595 crore for Punjab and Rs 183.62 crore for Haryana). The Central Government would extend a subsidy of Rs 486.64 crore.
"The Committee recommends that the scheme for purchase of machinery with the recommended subsidy rates be operated for the 2018-19 period. The effort should be to position all the machinery before September 2018 in the field," the report said. The funds are expected to be approved by April this year and the farm equipments would be made available before September 2018, just in time before the harvesting season begins.