This book discusses the important issue of the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of agricultural residue burning, common in agricultural practices in many parts of the world. In particular, it focuses on the pollution caused by rice residue burning using primary survey data from Punjab, India. It discusses emerging solutions to agricultural waste burning that are cost-effective in terms of both money and time. The burning of agricultural residue causes severe pollution in land, water and air and contributes to increased ozone levels and climate change in the long term. However, appropriate assessments have not been undertaken so far to demonstrate the relevant impact of agriculture-based pollution, especially residue burning. This book addresses this gap in the literature. Punjab has been used as a case study as it is the chief granary of India, contributing to 27.2 percent of the Indian national produce of rice and 43.8 percent of wheat. It is presumed that the findings from this state will be useful not only for other agricultural areas in India, but across the world. This book, therefore, sensitizes policy makers, researchers and students about the impacts of air pollution caused by agricultural residue burning---a subject not much dealt in the literature---and provides a way forward.
Author Biography:
Parmod Kumar is Professor and Head (Director), Agricultural Development and Rural Transformation Centre, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru, India. He has previously worked at the National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi and the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. He obtained his post-doctorate as Sir Ratan Tata Fellow from the Institute of Economic Growth and doctorate from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He was fellow under the International Visitors Program sponsored by the US government. Professor Kumar has authored six research volumes and published more than 40 research articles in refereed national and international journals. He is leading several research projects sponsored by the Government of India and various international organizations. He is the managing editor of the Journal of Social and Economic Change and is on the editorial board of Agricultural Situation in India and the Indian Journal of Agricultural Marketing. He is a member of various committees of the Union and state governments. Professor Kumar was conferred the IDRC India Social Science Research Award for his work on the public distribution system.
Surender Kumar is Professor at the Department of Business Economics, University of Delhi, New Delhi, and is one of the lead authors for IPCC AR5. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) and Senior JSPS Fellow at the Yokohama National University Yokohama (Japan). Professor Kumar has authored four books: Environmental and Economic Accounting for Industry (Oxford University Press, New Delhi); Economics of Sustainable Development: The Case of India (Springer, New York); Energy Prices and Induced Innovations (VDM Verlag); and Economics of Air Pollution (VDM Verlag); and about 50 research papers in journals such as the European Journal of Law and Economics, Ecological Economics, Economic Modelling, Environmental and Resource Economics, Environment and Development Economics, Resource and Energy Economics, etc. He teaches courses in environmental economics and advanced econometrics.
Laxmi Joshi works at the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, India. She has previously worked at the National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research, New Delhi as Senior Research Associate, and in the National Commission on Farmers, New Delhi as Research Officer. She has published a dozen papers in different subjects, such as agriculture policy for farmers, diversification, watershed development, and so on. Her research has been published in the Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, Economic and Political Weekly, International Water Organisation Colombo (research report on water), etc. She has also co-edited a volume on livestock and different farming systems.
