Enough machines, but many take the easy way out by setting fields on fire

At Sheron village in Sangrur’s Sunam block, farmer Nirmal Singh is in a hurry to clear the paddy stubble on his field. He shouts out orders to the labourers and soon, their entire 11 acres are on fire.

Nirmal Singh jointly owns a super seeder with some of the other farmers in the village. A super seeder is a tractor-mounted machine that sows seeds – wheat, in this instance – while simultaneously tilling the earth and incorporating the standing stubble and the straw into the soil.

Asked why he had set his field on fire when he could have used the super seeder, he says, “There’s no doubt that the super seeder buries the stubble under the earth while sowing wheat but the chopped stubble attract insects and then we need to spray a lot of pesticides on the wheat crop. So this doesn’t work. The government should send us balers instead and then we won’t have to set the fields on fire.”

Balers are machines used to compress straw into bales for easy transport and storage.

While farmers admit there are enough machines, from happy seeders to super seeders and mulchers, to deal with the stubble, there are few alternatives cheaper than setting their farms on fire.

In Ugrahan village, there are around 10-12 farmers groups who own farm machines – bought at rates subsidised by the government – yet, a majority of the farmers had set the stubble on fire in their fields.

Sarpanch Pargat Singh of Sheron village admit that while their village has enough machines to manage the stubble, farmers resort to the easy way out.

Harbans Singh, former Chief Agriculture Officer (CAO) of Sangrur, who has been placed under suspension by the government for allegedly failing to control the fires, said the district has around 8,000 machines including 2,262 super seeders and 922 happy seeders, and that all these machines can together cover 70 per cent of the total cultivated area. “We organised 240 farmer awareness camps, painted messages on walls on the ill-effects of stubble burning, invited private companies to collect stubble but without the cooperation of farmers, all our efforts go in vain. It’s a mindset problem,” he told The Indian Express.

Sangrur, the home district of Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, is among the worst offenders, reporting the maximum number of farm fires in the state this season. Of the 26,583 fires recorded in the state since the start of the farm fires around September 15, as of November 4, 3,644 incidents have been from Sangrur’s 470 villages. The district recorded 8,006 farm fires last year.

Between November 1 and 4, three of the villages The Indian Express visited in Sangrur – Ugrahan, Chhanjli and Sheron – together reported over 100 fires, one of the highest concentrations of farm fires.

In Chhanjli village, farmer Jagsir Singh is burning the stubble on his 13 acres. Jagsir says he has just harvested his PUSA-44 crop – a long-duration paddy variety that takes 158-165 days to be harvested — and has run out of time to prepare his field for the wheat crop.

While the popularity of high-yielding, long-duration paddy varieties such as PUSA 44, Peeli PUSA and Dogar PUSA is said to be a factor behind the farm fires, another reason is said to be pressure from farmers unions, who have resisted the idea of farmers being penalised for the fires. The president of the largest farmer union in Punjab, the Bhartiya Kisan Union (Ugrahan) Joginder Singh Ugrahan, hails from Ugrahan village in Sangrur.

For over a month, farmers groups sat on a dharna in Sangrur, seeking, among other demands, an assurance that no “strict action” would be taken against those who set their fields on fire. On October 29, after a meeting between leaders of the union and Punjab Agriculture Minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal at the Circuit House in Patiala, BKU’s Ugrahan informed the media that the government had promised to meet all their demands.

According to the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB), between 2016 and 2020, around 861 FIRs were filed against farmers for burning stubble. No cases were registered in 2021 and so far 2022.

With farmers a key vote bank, the previous Congress government had announced that all cases against farmers for stubble burning would be withdrawn. The AAP government has also assured that no punitive action would be taken against farmers if they are caught burning stubble.

The only action the government takes against erring farmers is to levy a nominal fine – an ‘environmental compensation’ – around Rs 2,500 and Rs 15,000 per field set on fire. So far this season, the Punjab Pollution Control Board (PPCB) has imposed fines worth Rs 2.01 crore, of which Rs 1.05 crore is from Sangrur alone.

Director of Punjab Agriculture Department Gurvinder Singh said the government has launched a massive awareness campaign and has already distributed over one lakh machines to manage the stubble. “We now seek full cooperation from the farmers too,” he said.

A senior officer in the Punjab Agriculture Department, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the fires are the result of lack of fear among farmers of any punitive action by the government.

“We caught several farmers who had purchased subsidised machines from the government yet resorted to burning the stubble. The government can at least take action in such cases. Unless there is fear of law, the fires can’t be controlled,” he said.