By DC Correspondent
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The Supreme Court’s directive to the Commission for Air Quality Management, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and pollution control boards of the northern states to come up with measures to prevent air pollution within three weeks, ahead of winter when pollution levels spike is a welcome development but the court’s suggestion that farmers be put behind bars for stubble burning as a warning to others reflects a regressive and authoritarian approach which offers a cure worse than the disease.Clearing the agriculture fields ahead of the new crop season by stubble burning is a farming practice. It indeed causes air pollution but the villagers never complained about it, as it is a short-duration issue which has its own solutions. However, urbanisation extended cities to the villages, and this phenomenon brought with it attendant issues such as higher population density and new sources of pollution including burning of fossil fuels. The new dwellers who brought no solutions with them for the problems they would create now blame the old ones. Yet, to blame the famers, whom the Chief Justice of India rightly dubbed “because of whom we eat”, for a practice which sustains agriculture is an attempt to deflect responsibility.As counsel for the Punjab government pointed out, jailing the farmers who own a hectare or two will only bring suffering to them and their families instead of addressing the real issue. Now that the apex court has stepped in and drawn the attention of the government and its myriad agencies, it is up to them to come up with scientific, sustainable and practical solutions for an issue that makes every winter a nightmarish experience for the residents of the nation’s capital. They should help the farmers identify new solutions other than those they have practised and save the air quality from deteriorating.
