Street plays, wall paintings: NGO leads the fight against farm fires in Malwa

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, November 25

While the “high-pitch” campaign of state government against stubble burning received a lukewarm response during the last month, the Kheti Virasat Mission (KVM), a voluntary organisation that began its campaign against the menace in this part of the state during the first week of September, has proved to be a silver lining in the dark and smoky clouds.

The NGO has been successful in sensitising farmers of the Malla village here towards the environmental damage caused by farm fires. No stubble burning has been reported this season on 3,500 acres of paddy fields here. In the Bathli village of Patiala, 90 per cent of farmers have not burnt paddy stubble.

“The credit for this goes to the KVM,” said Harminder Singh, the sarpanch of Bathli. Negligible or comparatively low farm fires have been reported in many other surrounding villages.

Under “Project Bhoomi”, the KVM began a project in collaboration with the KK Birla Memorial Society to check stubble burning in the state.

The project includes door-to-door village level meetings, nukkad nataks and wall paintings in villages of six districts in the Malwa region, including Faridkot, Bathinda, Sangrur, Patiala, Muktsar and Mansa.

The KVM has so far organised 120 nukkad nataks, farm dialogue programs, made thousands of wall paintings and distributed pamphlets and study material about the adverse impacts of stubble burning among the farmers and in the schools of rural areas, said Umindera Dutt, the executive director of the organisation.

Dutt said in addition to the heavy emission of greenhouse gases by stubble burning, the state was losing 38.5 lakh metric tonnes of organic carbon, 59,000 MTs of nitrogen, 2,000 MTs of phosphorous and 34,000 MTs of potassium every year.

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