Air Pollution : Need For Permanent Solution, Not Knee-Jerk Reactions

Deepavali, this time, hasn't brought happiness and enlightenment to us, especially people living in Delhi, Punjab and Chandigarh. We continue to smog poison As f now air is highly polluted in region . Breathing difficulty has gone up by 20 percent. Its not only Deepavali's pollution but burning of stubble in Punjab and Haryana. Stubble burning has been there in North since long .

The straw stubble that remains after harvest of grains, like paddy and wheat is set to fire in the fields. The smoke from this burning produces a cloud of particulates, which are highly "toxic". For the last few tears, the stubble burning has resulted in air-pollution emergencies in capital city New Delhi.

Farmers resort to stubble burning as it is cheaper. They even prefer to pay penalty rather than weed out the stubble. The reason is that the cost of stubble burning is cheaper as penalty works out to be around Rs 2,500 per acre.Weeding out is much costlier. The cost factor also prevents farmers from hiring combine harvester to remove the stubble.

Despite stubble burning making the soil less fertile and pushing farmers into using more fertilisers, water and power for the same area, they go for convenient low cost traditional practice.

Delhi has been the worst hit.The national capital is battling apocalyptic levels of air pollution post Deepavali. The pollution rose to the worst levels so far this year on Sunday, emergency control measures notwithstanding.Delhi govt has gone for traffic rationing scheme("odd-even") from Monday.

Given the emergency, we need to find a permanent solution to stop stubble burning. Traffic rationing is just temporary measure,

Happy Seeder could be a viable alternative to conventional tillage, according to experts. To start with, government should help farmer for using Happy Seeder for every hectare of wheat sown. This will ensure that the initial investment on procuring the seeders is not foisted on the farmer. Government should look for other alternatives as well.

Air pollution is a very serious problem. Nothing is more necessary than pure air.The problem doesn't require knee-jerk reactions as is our wont. It needs permanent solution.