Financial aid to farmers is way forward to end stubble burning

Paddy stubble burning in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, and the consequent smog in whole northwest India, especially Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR), has brought this hazardous practice by farmers under the sharp focus of the courts, government and civil society members as the clamour grows for putting an end to the exercise of setting the crop residue on fire.

Problem is more acute in Punjab as over 29 lakh hectares area was under paddy including basmati this season where farmers resorted to stubble burning despite the ban ordered by the National Green Tribunal (NGT). Though government imposed fines on farmers who defied the ban, stubble burning continued in Punjab this season while the instances were less in neighbouring Haryana. Even the peasant organisations in Punjab prompted farmers to burn the paddy straw, in case the government didn’t compensate them to manage the crop residue through mechanical means.

Facing a ‘catch-22’ situation, the Punjab government didn’t take any strong action against the farmers with the chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh even saying that the state’s farmers were incapable of managing paddy stubble by other means, which were costly, as they were reeling under acute financial stress due to rising input costs of cultivation with no matching hike in the rates for their crops.

He even sought financial assistance from the Union government to help the farmers to deal with the crop straw after harvest and demanded they be paid Rs 100 per quintal over the minimum support price (

MSP

) for paddy. On the other hand, farmer outfits demanded Rs 200 per quintal above the paddy’s support price for managing crop stubble without setting the fields on fire.

Farmers’ reluctance to stop paddy stubble burning notwithstanding, it is a pointer to the crisis faced by the agrarian community of Punjab, which is witnessing growing indebtedness, shrinking landholdings, rising input costs and disproportionate hike in MSP for their crops. To manage paddy stubble without setting it on fire, farmers have to either buy machinery like rotavator, happy seeder, mulcher, and paddy straw chopper shredder among others or hire it, which adds to their cost of cultivation, thereby reducing their already dwindling returns.

As per the figures worked out by the

Commission for Agricultural Costs

and Prices (CACP), before announcing the MSP for kharif crops including paddy for the 2017-18 marketing season, the comprehensive cost (including imputed rent and interest on owned land and capital) for rice cultivation is Rs 53,538 per hectare and the gross value of output (GVO) of Rs 57,803 per hectare, leaving farmers with a net return of Rs 4,265 per hectare (Rs 1,706 per acre).

Farmers say if they use machinery to manage paddy straw, they would have to bear an additional cost of about Rs 1,000-1,500 per acre. This leaves scanty profit for farmers; hence they resort to the easier albeit extremely harmful method of setting the paddy stubble on fire. Their demand for financial assistance—either as lumpsum per acre to bear the burden of managing paddy stubble or higher subsidy on buying machinery to deal with crop residue—is not wholly justified.



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