-Scroll.in Providing them machinery to remove loose straw and expanding the industries that use crop residue could help tackle the problem, says a new study. It is that time of the year. Delhi’s air is becoming poisonous and, once again, Punjab’s farmers burning paddy straw are being blamed for it. But few bother to ask why these farmers dispose of their crop residue in such a polluting way even though the risk...

-The Hindu Farmers in Punjab continue to burn paddy stubble every winter despite a ban on the practice. Jacob Koshy and Vikas Vasudeva report on the compulsions that drive farmers to adopt this method of clearing their fields and the efforts by the State administration to wean them off it The highway to Bibipur, a hamlet about 50 km from Patiala town, cuts through acres of paddy. Some of the rice stalk...

-Livemint.com Since the paddy straw cannot be used as animal feed, farmers set fire to it to get the field ready for the next crop of wheat New Delhi: On a balmy evening last week, Sandeep Singhroha, a farmer from Haryana’s Karnal district, set fire to a pile of paddy stubble with a matchstick and then dragged the pile across his field with a garden fork. Soon, the two-acre plot was up...

-Livemint.com The pollution problem is about the allocation of right resources in the right areas. It is a political problem more than an economic one Delhi starts to become dystopian, a few weeks before Diwali, and this continues for around a month after the festival of lights. The conventional explanation for the Delhi smog (in fact, it impacts large parts of North India) is the burning of rice straw by the farmers...

-The Times of India PATIALA: When smoke from burning paddy stubble was choking Delhi last year, one small village near Nabha in Punjab was doing its bit to keep the air clean. Not a straw was burnt in Kalar Majra, where 60 families farm about 700 acres. “The government chose our village as a model, and gave all the machinery needed to manage the crop residue,” says Bir Dalvinder Singh, a Kalar...