Agriculture has an environment problem but India’s policies continue to treat both as separate

This October, residents of Delhi NCR breathed a sigh of relief – 10 days into the month, the air quality was still in the “moderate” category, uncharacteristic for this time of the year.

Usually, by this time, the region gets enveloped in a thick layer of smog, owing particularly to cold weather, low wind speed, and farm fires from the neighbouring states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. This pushes the air quality index to hazardous levels, leaving residents choking and breathless.

This year, a late monsoon withdrawal, coupled with farmers delaying stubble burning in the fields due to floods in September, has meant that air pollution is beginning to increase, but later than usual.

Stubble-burning, however, is only one among the plethora of environmental challenges the country is facing – soil-quality deterioration, groundwater depletion and contamination are giving policymakers sleepless nights.

Though the problems appear distinct, they share a common origin: contemporary agricultural practices.

Legally, too, they represent a deeper structural issue – the divergence between India’s agricultural and environmental law-policy frameworks.

Despite clear synergies between the two, the country’s law-policy architecture continues to treat agriculture and environment as isolated and distinct spheres.

Obsolete agricultural policies

India’s agricultural policy has been driven by the logic of food security and justifiably so. Feeding a large population was amongst the foremost challenges for the newly independent Indian...

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