Letter: India’s toxic smog problem has clear solutions

John Reed makes sev­eral import­ant points regard­ing the toxic smog in north­ern India dur­ing the winter months (Out­look, Novem­ber 21). However, three factors merit con­sid­er­a­tion for devis­ing effic­a­cious policies.

First, rice is a luc­rat­ive crop that has low tran­spir­a­tion effi­ciency and should be cul­tiv­ated primar­ily in coastal regions with plenty of rain­fall and not in water-scarce regions of north­ern India. Fur­ther­more, elec­tri­city sub­sidies for farm­ers encour­age rapid ground­wa­ter extrac­tion, and only a few states such as Maha­rashtra have devised sys­tem­atic ground­wa­ter recharge policies.

Second, stubble from rice can be mixed with organic waste for pro­du­cing nat­ural fer­til­iser. However, it is unreas­on­able to expect farm­ers to bear the costs, and projects such as “Cli­mate Smart Vil­lages” in Mad­hya Pra­desh col­lect stubble from farm­ers thereby redu­cing crop residue burn­ing.