Nasa images show an India dotted with fires

Nasa images from the past ten days show large parts of India are dotted with fires stretching across Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and even some southern states. In a sweltering summer, these fires are augmenting the heat and causing pollution via release of black carbon, a component of soot with high global warming effect.

Some of these dots may be forest fires but Hiren Jethva, research scientist at Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center, says fires in central India may be mostly crop fires as forest fires are usually uncontrolled and, therefore, produce more smoke and haze.

Agricultural scientists are linking the massive rise in crop fires in recent years to the dependence of farmers on combine harvesters, which leave a short stubble behind. The practice of stubble burning is not limited to the northern states of Haryana and Punjab.


While burning of paddy stubble has been a common practice among farmers because it is unsuitable as fodder, increasing incidence of wheat stubble burning is a relatively new trend. States with crop fires seen in the Nasa maps have a dominant ricewheat cropping system. There are two choices of harvesting for farmers — manual or combine. But with acute shortage of labour, combines are turning out to be the quickest and cheapest mode of harvesting and preparing soil for paddy.

“I suspect that the use of combines is increasing across the country. I found that the single most important determinant of burning crop residue is the use of combines,” says Ridhima Gupta, an Indian School of Business researcher, who studied the economics of farm fires in Punjab. During her research, she found that using manual labour is twice as expensive as a harvester, and that crop stubble burning accounts for nearly 14% of the country’s black carbon emissions.

The highest number of fires is being seen in Madhya Pradesh. About 10 farmers have already been detained this year in Sehore for burning wheat stubble that spread fire to nearby farms.