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A Farm labourer burns paddy stubble aft harvesting astatine a colony successful Patiala connected Saturday. (Express photograph by Harmeet Sodhi)
India plans to number toxic workplace fires by monitoring the burnt country they permission alternatively than the existent method of utilizing orbiting satellites to measurement unrecorded fires.
Here is simply a look astatine however India counts workplace fires – a large contributor to terrible contamination successful the northbound – and wherefore its method is being questioned.
Why are workplace fires lit?
Farmers successful India airy fires, successful usurpation of laws that barroom the practice, to rapidly wide harvest discarded oregon stubble near down aft paddy is harvested truthful that they tin works wheat.
Although the authorities offers subsidies connected harvesting machines that tin regenerate this method, request has been debased owed to their precocious terms oregon agelong hold for those looking to rent them.
How does India show workplace fires?
Officials accidental satellites are the lone mode to show workplace fires since they seizure a overmuch larger area.
India’s abstraction bureau procures information from 2 orbiting NASA satellites that walk implicit the bluish breadbasket states of Punjab and Haryana, among others, doubly a time – astir 10.30 americium (0500 GMT) and 1.30 p.m. (0800 GMT).
This is past shared with the authorities to number workplace fires.
Is this method foolproof?
NASA satellites lone seizure instances of workplace fires during the constricted play erstwhile they are passing implicit the region, which takes them 90 seconds. They truthful lone seizure immoderate blaze disposable astatine that clip oregon lit successful the erstwhile fractional hour.
Experts fishy that farmers have, implicit time, go alert of this surveillance play and shifted the clip of burning their harvest discarded to evade the NASA satellites.
Why is it being questioned now?
An advisor to the Supreme Court, which is monitoring contamination absorption by authorities successful the nationalist superior region, this week said determination was a discrepancy successful the workplace occurrence information obtained from orbiting and stationary satellites.
Citing accusation fixed by a elder idiosyncratic astatine NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, she said that a South Korean stationary outer had captured workplace fires astatine 4.20 p.m. (1050 GMT), good aft the NASA satellites had moved on.
What is the alternative?
The tribunal had directed the national authorities to procure information of workplace fires from stationary satellites arsenic an alternate but the authorities said this information is “sub-optimal”.
Instead, India’s abstraction bureau is moving connected a strategy to number workplace fires by studying the burnt country they permission behind.
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