Editorial 1 : The rice of the matter
Introduction: The Supreme Court (SC) bench has come down heavily on the adjoining states of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
What did SC ask these states?
- The bench has asked them to stop stubble burning in paddy fields forthwith, and then find long-term solutions.
- It also suggested making the local Station House Office (SHO) responsible for its implementation. How far this will be implemented is yet to be seen.
What is causing deterioration in Delhi’s air quality?
- Biomass burning (mainly stubble burning) accounted for 37.85 per cent of pollution.
- Notably, Delhi’s transport accounted for just 12.67 per cent
- Delhi’s construction and dust accounted for less than 3 per cent.
- Clearly, the most urgent action needed is controlling stubble burning in neighbouring states, notably Punjab.
Impact of Delhi’s air pollution on the life of people
- If Delhi’s pollution — stubble burning is a big culprit for that — is not controlled, people in the city are likely to lose 11.9 years of their life. (as per the Air Quality Life Index report (2023) of the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute.)
- Given that our life expectancy hovers around 71 years, losing 11.9 years of life for a population of about 22 million people in the National Capital Territory, is like killing 3.7 million people through polluted air.
What are the ways to stop stubble burning?
- Uprooting the entire stubble after harvesting paddy.
- Making bales out of stubbles for firing boilers.
- Using stubble for mulching.
- Using smart happy seeder machine, which can sow seed in the stubbled field.
The peculiar case of Punjab
- Punjab-Haryana belt needs to be drastically cut from 4.7 million hectares (m ha) to just 2.5 m ha.
- The paddy cultivation in Punjab produces at least 5 tonnes of CO2 eq/ha. (A study at ICRIER on Low Carbon Agriculture)
- The SC rightly pointed out that it is not a suitable crop for this region and is depleting the water table fast.
- Punjab farmers get a subsidy on paddy cultivation to the tune of almost Rs 30,000/ha, which comes through free power and highly subsidised urea and other chemical fertilisers.
- This subsidy constitutes roughly one-third of the profits in Punjab’s paddy cultivation; this is the root cause of farmers sticking to paddy even when they know they are damaging water aquifers.
- This is reinforced by the open-ended procurement of paddy by state agencies for the Food Corporation of India (FCI).
How to wean farmers in the Punjab-Haryana belt away from paddy?
- Give a subsidy of say Rs 25,000/ha to farmers switching from paddy to pulses, oilseeds and millets, or even maize.
- This will help create a crop-neutral incentive structure and will not cost the government as it will save that subsidy from paddy cultivation.
- Incentivise the private sector to set up ethanol plants based on maize, starting from places, where water table depletion needs to be arrested as soon as possible.
- This will help create a market for ethanol blending with fossil fuels, and help in lowering air pollution from vehicular traffic.
- State agencies should reduce paddy procurement from those farmers burning stubble, and also in those blocks where the water table is depleting fast.
- FCI should make it clear that they will not pay more than 3 per cent on top of MSP for any mandi fee and commissions for arhatias.
- This should be uniform across states.
- PM needs to sit down with chief ministers of the states adjoining Delhi and offer a package to move towards more nutritious crops, millets, oilseeds, and pulses by assuring a procurement of these at MSP.
- There is a need of all these crops that are more nutritious, and more nature-friendly.
What more can be done?
- Our reliance on rice and wheat in the Public Distribution System is excessive, causing diabetes and harming the environment.
- Of more than 5 lakh fair price shops, at least 10 per cent (50,000) can be made nutrition hubs where these nutritious crops will also be supplied along with wheat and rice.
- The consumers should be given a choice whether they want rice and wheat or other crops costing the same money through food vouchers.
- This will create a more diversified market, save water, minimise GHG emissions from the crop sector, and reduce pollution in Delhi coming from stubble burning.
- Delhi’s pollution will also have to be tackled by replacing modes of transport, from fossil-fuel-based vehicles to electric vehicles, or at least 20 percent ethanol blending in all Delhi’s petrol pumps.
Conclusion: People must be made aware that air pollution is becoming a national-level problem in India. It is not restricted to a particular state now. Hence a national level effort must be taken to tackle this problem. We can only hope that Delhi’s policy-makers can rise to this challenge and save us from choking deaths.
Editorial 2 : A distress call
Introduction: According to a report in this newspaper from Lucknow, hundreds of women — who otherwise play the role of saviours as communication officers for Uttar Pradesh’s Dial 112 emergency helpline — are protesting in distress.
What are their grievances?
- They assert that Rs 11,400 for a month’s work (that’s Rs 380 per day) where a regular day involves handling at least 600 emergency calls (ranging from road accidents to crimes against women to harassment) is not adequate remuneration. Their salaries have not increased while the cost of living has increased around them.
- The second complaint of the communication workers is about the lack of job security since they are employed by a private firm, and not by the government.
- However, seen in the context of India’s employment data, this protest underlines a sobering reality, especially for women in India’s labour force.
What does the official employment data reveal?
- Most of the headline indices continued to improve.
- These included improving the labour force participation rate (implying more people were demanding jobs), falling unemployment rate (implying the ratio of those who looked for a job and failed to get one is falling) and rising workforce-population ratio (implying that overall, the ratio of employed people and the total population was rising).
- Most of these positive changes were happening due to women entering the workforce.
- Most of the new jobs were of very poor quality — self-employment — where monthly incomes are much lower than regular wages.
- All types of incomes — be it for regular wages, casual labour or self-employment — had remained largely stagnant over the past six years. Simply put, women were entering the job market driven by economic woes.
Reasons for low female labour force participation in India
- Social norms and cultural expectations
- Lack of access to education and skills training
- Limited employment opportunities for women
- Discrimination in the workplace
- Lack of support for working mothers
- Lack of safety and security
- Early marriage and pregnancy
- Lack of access to financial services
- Women entering the labour force late due to the rise in higher education among them
Steps need to be taken to improve female labour force participation in India
- Need to Integrate Policy of Work, Livelihoods, Earnings and Poverty, Re‐think and Integrate Macroeconomic Policy with Social Policy.
- Improve women’s access to Credit, skills, and marketing.
- Pay regular wages to Asha workers, Anganwadi teachers and helpers and cooks for mid‐day meals and regularise their employment.
- Improve working conditions for women, Investments in childcare facilities and toilets for women at all workplaces.
- Sensitisation on issues such as sexual division of labour within the home through large-scale media advertisement.
- Implementation of minimum wage laws, Creation of employment opportunities.
- Enable universal access to high-quality public health care facilities and support for women's care.
- All women workers should have identity cards and be covered under the Unorganised Sector Social Security Act, of 2008.
- Secure and uphold women’s ownership rights over basic productive resources like land, and create equal rights to property.
- Universal healthcare with health insurance, Focuses on primary health so that private expenses and indebtedness on account of health and hospitalisation can be eliminated.
- Better childcare facilities, more maternity leave, Remote working facilities, and Better public transport.
- A minimum social security package is available to all citizens that include life insurance, disability insurance, health insurance, and pensions offered through multiple distribution channels.
Conclusion: The distress call from the women workers in Lucknow provides a real-life example of the macro data. What is required is broad-based economic growth: An economy that creates so many new and well-paying jobs that young women enter the workforce out of choice, not distress.