Rural farm fires and Diwali fireworks likely to trigger pollution emergencies in northern India during late autumn and early winter, despite the rollout of new pollution control measures in the capital city territory.

DELHI, India – As India braces for the winter smog season, Delhi has announced a pollution mitigation plan for the expected peak season – fine-tuned from a bold new series of measures first announced in April.  

However, despite the more science-based, and enforcement-oriented nature of the new plans, as compared to their predecessors, the 23.3 million residents of the National Capital City territory (NCT) may not see significantly lower pollution peaks this year than in past ones – at least in the early part of the winter pollution season.

This is because the new plan has no control over two critical factors that contribute to more than two-thirds of Delhi’s pollution spikes in the cold season: smoke from firecrackers and crop stubble burning drifting in from  farms in neighboring Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. 

Neighboring rural states lack winter pollution plans

Meanwhile, none of the neighboring states have matched Delhi’s advance initiative by rolling out a more proactive, evidence-based winter pollution mitigation plan, even though they all contain equally densely populated cities that suffer from equally toxic air.

Delhi’s plan includes curbs on construction, tighter checks on industries and vehicles, better enforcement against open waste burning, higher parking charges, staggered office timings and work-from-home mandates – all of which should bring down at least some of its base pollution load. But only two Delhi suburbs from adjoining states have announced scattered enforcement measures, focusing mainly on stricter compliance with existing restrictions.

This doesn’t augur well for the capital city region, where some 60–65% of winter pollution “comes from or is influenced by surrounding areas,” according to the Delhi Environment Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa. “Clean air is a shared responsibility,” the minister said on Monday.

On the issue of firecrackers, a two-judge Supreme Court panel Wednesday rejected a total ban on firecrackers around the upcoming Diwali festival (celebrated this year Nov 7), saying that could “hurt the sentiments of people.” Clean Air Activists are already considering launching a campaign saying “better to hurt sentiments than hurt lungs, heart and other organs.”

Crop stubble burning season coincides with weather conditions in ‘perfect storm’ 

As the monsoon retreats across northern India, a combination of slowing winds and an earlier-than-usual drop in night temperatures is setting the stage for an early onset of the infamous winter pollution season, when smoke from farm fires drifts across a broad swathe of the Indo-Gangetic plain, hovering over Delhi and neighboring regions. 

Smoke from all the burning gets trapped at ground level due to winter “thermal inversion,” in which warm air acts as a lid, trapping cold, polluted air underneath. 

With the mighty Himalayan range acting as a northern barrier, this toxic smog gets sealed over the Indo-Gangetic plain, where nearly half a billion Indians inhale it. Experts also note that the Super El Niño effect could reduce rain-causing western disturbances this winter, so the temporary benefit of pollutants being washed away by rain showers will also be lost.

Farmers have already started setting fire to paddy stubble standing in the fields after this year’s harvest – a longstanding strategy to prepare their fields quickly for the winter wheat sowing season. 

Satellite data compiled by the Indian Agricultural Research Institute tracked early incidents across multiple states in September 2026 including 25 fires in Punjab, followed by 19 in Uttar Pradesh and isolated incidents in other states. The fires are projected to intensify this year, to coincide with the country’s annual Diwali festival in early November.

A 2024 report by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology indicates that the first winter high-pollution episode happens when stubble fires peak. “This underscores the significant role that stubble burning plays as a source of both primary and secondary pollutants, affecting…distant locations such as Delhi,” the report stated.

And this winter, that first pollution spike from farm fires will likely overlap with Diwali, when half a billion people in Delhi and other parts of northern India are exploding holiday firecrackers.

Punjab unlikely to penalize stubble burning in election year 

India’s Punjab state has historically had the highest crop stubble fires. 

On the books, penalties for burning stubble include a combination of financial fines, police reports, and adverse “red” entries in the farmers’ land revenue records. But with Punjab preparing for its legislative assembly elections in February 2027, the governing  Aam Aadmi Party is unlikely to be very strict in penalizing farmers, who are its base of support in the primarily agrarian state. 

As pre-poll canvassing will be in full swing, other political parties will also likely hold back from pressuring the government on stricter penalties.

While Punjab also offers subsidies to farmers to buy or lease machines to grind rather than burn crop residues, these have proven to be less effective than incentives offered by other states in the form of direct cash benefits. 

“Haryana has done a much better job in administering its subsidies,” a Delhi-based think tank researcher who conducts fieldwork in both states concluded. The Supreme Court has even asked Punjab to take a cue from Haryana’s example of managing its paddy stubble and subsidy management.

Haryana manages its crop residue better

Haryana state, the other major contributor to Delhi smog, has historically managed its crop stubble better than Punjab.

There are two reasons for this: Haryana grows a larger percentage of basmati rice as compared to Punjab; basmati stubble, being more nutritious and digestible, makes better cattle fodder and thus doesn’t need to be burnt, as it gets absorbed. 

Meanwhile, Punjab rice varieties contain more silica in their residue, which makes them less welcome as fodder.

Second, Haryana seems to be doing a better job of incentivizing farmers with both carrot-and-stick measures to better manage residues. This includes subsidies and other direct cash benefits. 

And Haryana farmers have also tended to be more compliant with existing restrictions, perhaps because penalties are also enforced, a senior researcher who has done fieldwork in both states told Health Policy Watch.  

Unfortunately, between the four states surrounding Delhi, smoke from burning fields affects the densely populated capital the most during the post-harvest months. By December, the contribution of farm fires falls to nearly negligible levels while other winter pollution sources become more significant.

 Central Air Quality Commission directs states to use drones to detect fires

Making matters worse, farmers in Punjab and other northern Indian states have also learned to evade satellite detection by burning late in the evening. Fire counts in the last winter season became unreliable as farmers learned to circumvent the twice-daily (1:30pm and 1:30am) satellite circumnavigation.

Calling stubble-burning prevention an “urgent priority,” the federal government-appointed Commission on Air Quality Management for the first time asked states to use drones to detect farm fires more accurately. If implemented, this measure would at least provide more reliable data through ground-based monitoring and stronger inter-agency coordination.

“Reducing these episodic pollution spikes depends on precise, timely detection of burning events, robust surveillance and coordinated enforcement,” the CAQM said on its website. 

The Commission has also asked the Indian Space Research Organization to differentiate between “high,” “medium” and “low” intensity fires by changing its methodology and models. The satellite models used at present cannot differentiate between the nature of fire, whether it is a large fire or a small, localized fire.

And the Commission has revamped India’s nation-wide pollution emergency response Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP).  Curbs on pollution-generating activities can now be strengthened preemptively, based on dynamic AQI and meteorological forecasts, according to a CAQM announcement on Tuesday.

But this more proactive GRAP system still focuses largely on urban measures for curtailing construction, vehicular movement, diesel generators, and household stoves, sidestepping the critical issues of crop residue fires and firecrackers. 

And CAQM has so far not wielded the full weight of its statutory authorities to rein in the latter two factors. 

Expanding Delhi’s monitoring of urban hot spots

In Delhi, the state government also has announced that it will add 13 new continuous ambient air quality monitoring stations, bringing the city’s total to 60 – enabling  “more granular monitoring of pollution levels and faster identification of local hotspots.”

While an expanded network undeniably strengthens monitoring and data collection, this also does not automatically translate into an actual reduction in emissions – even if a Government statement said it would use the new stations to facilitate “targeted enforcement and faster field-level response.” 

This is particularly true given that capital already has one of the densest air-quality monitoring networks among major global urban centers. This skepticism is compounded by the fact that existing monitors often mysteriously stop working on peak pollution days.

Furthermore, local media and citizens have documented heavy-duty, truck-mounted water sprinklers circling these stations to artificially lower readings. 

Triple-engine government finally focusing on proactive, scientific measures

While the Delhi government’s latest measures mostly echo last year’s with regards to construction, commuting and vehicle travel in a pollution emergency, the series of  announcements by both the central and state governments over the past six months do reflect a new, sharper focus on air pollution science through genuine emissions reduction and a shift to less polluting technologies.

In particular, shifts to EV transport and stricter limits on travel by highly polluting vehicles and stricter enforcement of laws against open waste burning should have a major year-round effect in reducing emissions over time – even if loopholes in the rules remain. 

For instance  – while a Pollution Under Control (PUC) certificate is now being required to allow vehicle owners to purchase petrol or diesel fuel, vehicles still are not tested for emissions of fine particulates, PM 2.5, which are among the most health-harmful air pollution emissions. 

The Delhi government’s commitment to step up “preventive and enforcement measures…with clear timelines, measurable targets and agency-wise accountability,” also reflects the “triple-engine government” force that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) currently wields in control at Delhi local and state levels as well as federal.

So while the Delhi government has undeniably been more proactive in its latest mobility policies – the real test will be better enforcement of the whole suite of emissions strategies, historically a weak point, along with more effective action against crop stubble burning in neighboring states.

Along with that, Delhi still faces big problems with municipal biomass as well as a challenge in stringently enforcing the ban on firecrackers, which generate a massive share of the toxic load during the four peak days of Diwali and are structurally far easier to restrict and contain – if only the political will existed. 

Image Credits: Neil Palmer, @pawanpgupta, Flickr, Britannica, Commission for Air Quality Management, Towards Public Policy.