By Aasheerwad Dwivedi and Aditya Sinha
The idea of unintended consequences is a powerful reminder of how even our best intentions can lead to unexpected outcomes. Economists have understood it for centuries, but it often gets lost in the noise of politics and policymaking. Decisions that seem right in the moment can cause ripples in ways no one saw coming. The latest Economic Survey offers a stark example of this: Delhi’s infamous air pollution — a problem born, at least in part, from policies that may have seemed like good ideas at the time.
Chapter 11 of the Economic Survey, Tracking Development through Satellite Images and Cartography, presents satellite imagery of Moga district, Punjab, showing a stark shift in the kharif crop cycle between 2005 and 2021. In June-July 2005, farms were moderately vegetated, but by 2021, vegetation during these months had nearly vanished. This reveals a two-to-three-week delay in kharif sowing, causing its harvest to overlap with rabi sowing in November. To prepare fields quickly for rabi crops, farmers resort to stubble burning, a major contributor to Delhi-National Capital Region’s (NCR) toxic air. This overlap isn’t a natural evolution of farming practices but the direct result of a Punjab government policy designed to address groundwater depletion. The unintended fallout of this policy is now choking millions.
The food scarcity of the 1960s brought the Green Revolution with Punjab at its heart, transforming it into the granary of India. The revolution’s success hinged on government interventions, particularly the minimum support price (MSP) mechanism, which created a powerful incentive structure favouring rice cultivation. While this policy ensured food security for the nation, it came at a significant cost to Punjab’s agricultural diversity and ecological balance.
The aggressive promotion of rice and wheat monoculture sidelined traditional crops, obliterating the region’s once-thriving crop diversity. In 1960-61, Punjab’s annual cropping cycle boasted 21 different crops. By 1991, this number had dwindled to nine, and by 2020, only seven crops remained in active cultivation. This monocultural shift not only depleted the soil but also increased the state’s dependence on groundwater for irrigation, exacerbating an already critical water crisis. The Green Revolution’s initial triumph masked its long-term costs, turning Punjab’s fertile lands into a ticking ecological and economic time bomb. The very policy that once fed a nation is now eroding the foundation of Punjab’s agricultural sustainability.
The bumper production was based on high extraction of groundwater and use of chemical fertilisers. The unintended outcome was the falling of groundwater table significantly and the reduced fertility of the soil as well. The alarm was raised for the first time in 1979 when groundwater levels started falling in central Punjab, but the floods in 1988 helped revive them. The water tables started to decline again, reaching alarming levels in the early 2000s.
To arrest the crisis of falling water table, the Punjab government adopted a policy on an experimental basis for a year in April 2008, and issued an ordinance which prohibited farmers from sowing paddy seeds in nurseries before May 10 and transplanting the saplings before June 10. Being a good monsoon year, farmers did not face water shortage due to late transportation and sowing. Paddy farms were mostly irrigated by rains resulting in no further stress to the already depleted groundwater table. The outcome convinced the political bosses of the efficacy of the ordinance, so finally the Punjab Preservation of Subsoil Water Act was enacted in 2009, which shifted the kharif sowing cycle ahead by at least two weeks.
There was, however, no change in the rabi sowing cycle. The law allows agriculture department officers to destroy the nursery or transplanted paddy. The Act levies a penalty of Rs 10,000 per hectare per month on the farmers who contravene it. It even allows field officers to disconnect power supply to a farmer’s field till the notified date if the farmer is found violating the law repeatedly. Punjab arrested water decline from 91 cm per year in 2000 to 55 cm per year in 2009-13 due to this law. Seeing the success, neighbouring agricultural state Haryana also enacted a similar law known as the Haryana Preservation of Subsoil Water Act, 2009.
The late sowing policy for kharif crops in Punjab and Haryana is a textbook example of a solution that ended up creating a bigger problem. While it was designed to tackle groundwater depletion, it has brought with it a massive negative side effect: Delhi-NCR’s air turns toxic every November.
It’s high time states step in and help farmers move beyond rice, especially in this region. Sticking to the rice-wheat cycle is depleting groundwater and choking the air with stubble smoke every winter. We have been stuck in this loop for too long. Breaking out of it won’t be easy, but someone needs to take the lead and bell the cat before it’s too late.
The writers respectively assistant professor, FMS, Delhi University, and OSD, research, EAC-PM.
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