The annual toxic haze over North India has again placed the spotlight on the country’s multi-faceted, yet struggling, strategy to stop farmers from burning paddy stubble. India’s “stubble playbook” combines technology subsidies, biological solutions, energy mandates, and financial penalties in a mix of incentives and enforcement.
The central strategy is to encourage in-situ (in-field) incorporation of stubble back into the soil through the Crop Residue Management (CRM) Scheme, which provides subsidies for essential farm machinery such as the Happy Seeder and mandates the use of Super Straw Management System (Super SMS) attachments on combine harvesters.
The Sub-Mission on Agricultural Mechanisation (SMAM) acts as the umbrella program facilitating cost-sharing and requiring states to submit composite action plans. A different experiment involves the Pusa Decomposer, a microbial spray developed by the IARI, which accelerates straw decomposition and is being used on thousands of acres, particularly in Delhi.
A major policy shift has been to treat straw as a feedstock for energy. Under the SAMARTH mission, the Power Ministry mandates that thermal plants co-fire a rising percentage of biomass pellets derived from straw, while the SATAT scheme encourages compressed biogas (CBG) plants to source it.
However progress on both energy-utilization schemes has been patchy, with most plants still under construction, limiting the reliable market for off-farm straw.
State governments have responded with their own mix of penalties and incentives. Punjab’s 2025 action plan targets managing over 19 million tonnes of straw and has increased fines for burning to up to ₹30,000 per incident. Haryana has taken the rare step of rolling out a direct cash incentive, offering farmers ₹1,200 per acre for managing straw responsibly.
Despite the comprehensive set of policies, the article concludes that the primary challenge is not a lack of schemes, but a failure in delivery. For a farmer, the decision to burn often comes down to immediate, practical factors: whether they can get a subsidized, working seeder on time, find a reliable buyer for their straw, or if a promised cash incentive actually lands in their bank account.
The unfulfilled 2019 Supreme Court order to pay small and marginal farmers ₹100 per quintal for avoiding burning remains a rallying point for farmer unions, who argue that penalties without compensation are fundamentally unfair. Regulators like the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) continue to issue annual directions and deploy flying squads, but bridging the gap between policy mandates and on-the-ground availability remains the key to extinguishing the stubble fires.