TellUs: Agro-ecological Crisis, Delhi, India Smogs

Delhi, India, smogs deemed an ‘argo-ecological’ crisis

The news has been riddled with stories of the intensive smogs lingering around Delhi, India. The severity of the situation has lead to flights being cancelled, local schools being shut down and the incident reflecting that of a “gas chamber” and a being deemed a “medical emergency” by doctors. However why is this happening?

Delhi’s Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal turned to
Twitter to describe his city as a “gas chamber.”

Agriculture history

To gain an understanding as to why and how these smogs occur, we have to look into India’s agricultural history. Nagendar Sharma, the Delhi-based media adviser to the capital's chief minister, gave us some insight into this history. The ‘green-revolution’ in India, taking place in the 1960s/70s, allowed the country for the first time to sustain itself in terms of food. The once famine-filled country was growing enough to feed the population, that had previously relied on aid from other countries. Rice is grown in monsoon season, July and August and wheat grown in December. 

Although the food crisis was alleviated, Aseem Prakash, founding director of the Centre for Environmental Politics at the University of Washington who was born in Delhi, believes that a water law adds to story. He states that “severe pollution started really in 2010”, so why was this? 

Due to water shortages the Punjab government in 2009 put forth the Punjab Preservation of Subsoil Water Act. A section of this act prohibited nursery sowing before May 10 and transplanting before June 10. This delayed the planting and harvesting of rice. Now with a late October rice harvest, farmers have about a month to clear their fields for winter wheat, typically sown in mid-November.

Smogs today

The majority of farms are often run by small-scale farmers that are on a limited budget. They often cannot afford a lot of workers and modern machinery needed to clear the fields efficiently, making sure all leftovers are cleared. The government introduced ‘happy seeders’, which you attach to a tractor to make sure rice straw stubble doesn’t get trapped in the tractors. However these are expensive, costing approximately 130,000 rupees (£1,363) and simply isn’t feasible, especially as farmers have to have already purchased a tractor. Many do not have this luxury.

Instead they turn to the cheapest and quickest method to prepare for planting, burning crop stubble. More than 2 million farmers burn 23 million tonnes of crop residue on some 80,000 square km of farmland in northern India every winter. This is the main cause of the smogs we experience today.

Other notable mentions that contribute to the toxic smog includes the 10 million plus vehicles in Delhi, dust from the cities construction boom and the burning of fossil fuels from the expanding factories.

The impact

The smoke created from the burning of crop stubble is a mixture of carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide. Satellite data, provided by Harvard University researchers, estimated that nearly half of Delhi's air pollution between 2012 and 2016 was due to stubble burning. Another study attributed more than 40,000 premature deaths in 2011 to air pollution arising from crop residue burning alone.

Last year local doctors declared a state of ‘medical emergency’, as patients stumbled into hospitals, filling them. This was because pollution levels reached several times the World Health Organisation's recommended limit. Levels of tiny particulate matter (known as PM 2.5) that enter deep into the lungs reached as high as 700 micrograms per cubic metre in some areas. To put this into perspective, the WHO recommends that the PM 2.5 levels should not be more than 25 micrograms per cubic metre on average in 24 hours. Last winter Air Quality Index (AQI) recordings consistently hit the maximum of 999 - exposure to such toxic air is likened to smoking more than two packs of cigarettes a day.

Air pollution in Delhi this week remains 'unhealthy'
(Source: Berkeley Earth)

What’s more is this smog lingers due to the lack of wind and is expected to stay for three weeks or so, endangering millions of people.

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