Patna: The Bihar government has blacklisted more than 2,000 farmers for polluting the environment by indulging in stubble burning in the fields despite frequent government’s warnings.
The blacklisted farmers won’t be getting the benefits of subsidy and incentives for agricultural works in the next three years.
Majority of the total 2,138 blacklisted farmers belong to south-western and south-central Bihar. Agriculture department officials said the government was compelled to initiate action against these farmers as they had been repeatedly ignoring the government’s warning and burning crop residues in the farmland which not only polluted the environment but also destroyed the standing crops in the field belonging to other farmers.
“Despite 75-80 per cent subsidy being given to farmers for purchasing combine harvesters, stubble burnings in farms go on unabated in the state. This is a very serious issue given the fact that combine harvester owners had submitted declarations about not indulging in stubble burning,” Bihar’s agriculture secretary N Saravana Kumar told the media on Monday.
The state government has been giving subsidies up to 80 per cent on seven agriculture implements to encourage farmers stay away from stubble burning. Majority of the incidents of stubble burning have been reported from Buxur, Nalanda, Bhojpur, Kaimur and Rohtas in Bihar.
Fires spread
What is further disastrous, the burning of crops residues in the fields has destroyed ready-to-harvest wheat crops in thousands of acres of land in the past one fortnight as fire spread fast due to the westerly winds sweeping across the state. A fresh incident was reported from Banka district where the wheat crops planted in several acres of lands and belonging to several farmers were gutted after a farmer burnt the crop remains in the field.
Environmentalists describe stubble burning as one of the major contributors of air pollution. According to them, burning of one tone of straw results in loss of 25 kg of potash, 5.5 kg of nitrogen, 2.3 kg of phosphorus and 1.2 kg of sulphur. As per an official estimate, the state produces 30 million tones of crop residues every year out of which four million tones are burnt in the field.
A latest Greenpeace Southeast Asia analysis of IQAir data says a total of 119,700 people died only in six Indian cities in 2000 as a result of air pollution. The six cities are—Delhi (54,000 deaths), Mumbai (25,000 deaths), Bengaluru (12,000 deaths), Hyderabad, Chennai (11,000 deaths each) and Lucknow (6,700 deaths).
The Greenpeace report released last week (on February 18) also stated that the air pollution caused massive economic losses to the tune of US $17.7 billion.
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