Rural India is Choking: Unmasking the Air Pollution Crisis from Biomass Burning, Stubble Fires, and Industrial Emissions
In the village of Chhatikara in Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura district, Rukmini Devi, a mother of two, sits outside her thatched home on a hazy January afternoon, fanning a makeshift stove, as smoke from smouldering cow dung cakes rises into the air and swirls around her. Her eldest son, barely six years old, coughs incessantly as he plays nearby. “His cough never leaves,” Rukmini says with a tired sigh. “Every winter, it gets worse.”
The air in Chhatikara carries more than just the chill of winter. Smoke from household kitchen fires and nearby fields, where agricultural waste is often burned, mingles with the emissions from vehicles passing along the Delhi-Agra highway.
Harbans Kaur, 46, from Singriwala village in Punjab’s Hoshiarpur district, vividly recalls the day inOctober 2024, whenshe traded her chulha (traditional stove) in the veranda for an LPG stove in the kitchen. “My sister-in-law and I mostly used the chulha with pathia (cow dung cakes) for breakfast,” she says. “But after Diwali, the smoke made it impossible to even sit in the veranda, so we had to shift indoors.”
Harbans is well aware of Delhi’s dire air quality, courtesy TV news. But her own reality is no different. “I had a sore throat for days, my eyes burnt when I stepped outside the house.”
Navjot, 28, who returned to his village Chukhiara in Jalandhar, Punjab, from Canada for his sister’s wedding in October last year, found himself grappling with an acrid stench that lingered for days. “My wife and I felt a sharp pain in our chest,” he says. “She came down with a severe fever that lasted days.”
Cities such as Delhi and Mumbai dominate the discourse on air pollution. But rural life is far from idyllic: air pollution-related ailments plague the rural population too. And several studies corroborate this phenomenon.
Northern malaise
The 2023 Climate Trends report on PM2.5 pollution in India, drawing on advanced satellite data, confirms that the annual surface particulate matter (PM2.5) levels across rural and urban areas continue to exceed India’s limit of 40 µg/m³, set by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), and remain drastically higher than the World Health Organization’s updated guideline of 5 µg/m³. PM2.5 is one of the most harmful air pollutants because it can travel deep into the lungs and bloodstream. The study found that the North India is most polluted with the PM 2.5 level of 74 ug/m3 and 58 ug/m3 in the rural region and 75 ug/m3 and 60 ug/m3 in the urban region for 2017 and 2022 respectively.
A 2020 study published in Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences by researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, and Colorado State University, US, used satellite-derived PM2.5 data to assess health impacts in urban and non-urban regions. The researchers found that outdoor air pollution in rural areas is just as severe as in the country’s urban centres. The Indo-Gangetic Plain—home to 9 percent of the global population—they found, is the most severely affected region in rural India, with population-weighted PM2.5 levels exceeding 100 µg/m³ across both urban and nonurban areas. This, the study says, has contributed to significant health impacts, including increased premature mortality from ischemic heart disease, strokes among adults, lower respiratory tract infections, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, and diabetes mellitus type. The nonurban areas experience higher overall mortality due to their larger populations.
Also Read | Season of smog: Not just Delhi, many north Indian cities are suffering
Another study conducted by IIT Kharagpur published in Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts in 2022 showed that 41 per cent of total nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution in India is emitted from rural areas. NO2 is 19 times more harmful than particulate matter and 25 times more damaging than sulphur dioxide (SO2). NO2, a potent greenhouse gas, traps heat 300 times more effectively than CO2. People who live in regions with high NO2, such as those near power plants, industries and cities, are prone to respiratory and cardiovascular disease-associated mortality independent of other criteria pollutants.
Satellite-derived PM2.5 data for the urban-rural grid across four regions in India reveals that the Northern region is the most polluted, with PM2.5 levels of 74 µg/m³ and 58 µg/m³ in rural areas, and 75 µg/m³ and 60 µg/m³ in urban areas for 2017 and 2022, respectively. Across all regions, there is minimal variation between urban and rural concentrations. However, rural PM2.5 levels tend to exceed urban levels in the Southern and Western regions, with some exceptions in certain years. Since 2017, the annual average PM2.5 levels in rural and urban areas of most states have followed a similar downward trend.
Deadly dung
As early as in 2003, CPCB released its Guidelines for Ambient Air Quality Monitoring, which differentiated between pollution in urban and rural areas. The guidelines addressed indoor air pollution in rural areas, caused by the burning of solid fuels such as dung and wood, which a significant proportion of the rural population still depends on. According to a research paper published in March 2023 in Environment International journalPM2.5 emissions from household sources contribute about 30 to 50 per cent of overall ambient PM2.5 levels in the country.
Over the years, there have been substantial efforts to reduce the use of solid fuels in rural kitchens, with varying degrees of success. In 2009, for instance, the Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy launched the National Biomass Cookstoves Initiative and installed some 27 lakh units by 2017. This was followed by the Unnat Chulha Abhiyan Programme in 2014. In this Programme both family and community cookstoves using biomass briquettes were distributed. The coverage of these programmes, however, was limited. Then came the widely publicised Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) in 2016, a nationwide initiative that aimed at providing clean cooking fuel, specifically liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), to women from socioeconomically disadvantaged households, to reduce household air pollution generated by burning solid fuels such as wood, coal, and biomass for cooking, heating, and lighting.
A key finding from the PMUY programme was that among all regions, rural areas have seen greater reductions in PM2.5 levels due to increased access to LPG. However, recent reports from Down to Earth, 2020 suggest that the scheme was not quite so successful. Access to LPG did not always lead to its consistent use beyond the first free cylinder. Cylinder refilling remained a significant issue: RTI data revealed that one in four Ujjwala Yojana beneficiaries received zero or only one LPG cylinder refill last year, despite the Rs.200 subsidy.
An International Energy Agency (IEA) report on India’s air quality in 2021 estimates that around 660 million people, just under half of India’s population, relied primarily on biomass for cooking and heating in 2019. When burned indoors in poorly ventilated spaces, these fuels expose households to indoor air pollution, which can have severe health consequences. India accounts for a quarter of the nearly 2.5 million premature deaths globally caused by indoor air pollution, says the IEA report, adding that efforts to address outdoor air pollution have been limited.
Stubble burning: Too close to home
Pollution from stubble burning is often seen as a major contributor to air pollution, especially PM2.5. in metros such as Delhi. However, its immediate effects are felt in nearby agricultural belts.
Renna, 46, of Kathar village in Jalandhar, Punjab, says, “Whenever we know there’s a farmer’s parali (stubble) fire after harvest, we make sure we close every door and window. First, fine dust from the turbines enters the house at harvest, and later, ash blows inside for days. Our eyes burn and we constantly cough.”
A 2021 TERI study on the impact of air quality from crop residue burning in the villages of Nabha block, Patiala district, Punjab, found that during the stubble burning period, the mean daily PM2.5 concentrations increased nearly fourfold (193-270 µg/m3). The study also noted a rise in respiratory complaints, such as wheezing, breathlessness on exertion, coughing in the mornings and at night, skin rashes, runny nose and itchiness of eyes across all age groups (10-60 years) during this period. It also found that women, children and the elderly are particularly vulnerable to pollution.
![A farmer burns stubble after a paddy harvest, on the outskirts of Amritsar, on October 22, 2024. Studeies have shown that during the stubble burning period, there is a rise in respiratory complaints, such as wheezing, breathlessness on exertion, coughing in the mornings and at night.]( "A farmer burns stubble after a paddy harvest, on the outskirts of Amritsar, on October 22, 2024. Studeies have shown that during the stubble burning period, there is a rise in respiratory complaints, such as wheezing, breathlessness on exertion, coughing in the mornings and at night.")
A farmer burns stubble after a paddy harvest, on the outskirts of Amritsar, on October 22, 2024. Studeies have shown that during the stubble burning period, there is a rise in respiratory complaints, such as wheezing, breathlessness on exertion, coughing in the mornings and at night.
| Photo Credit:
PTI
In December 2015, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) banned crop burning in Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. However, State environmental agencies and district authorities have failed to enforce the ban effectively. The ban remains impractical for farmers, many of whom lack the means or incentives to clear fields in alternative ways. Although the government provides subsidies for machines to help farmers plant new crops without removing dry stalks, these machines remain unaffordable for most.
India’s villages also bear the brunt of industrial pollution. With stricter regulations in cities and the availability of cheaper land in urban fringes, many heavy industries come to be located beyond city limits to rural areas, exposing villages to toxic air and effluents.
Most brick kilns and hot mix plants have been moved outside cities too. But only a few have adopted clean technology complying with CPCB norms. Among the most polluting are traditional kilns where firing is done in the open, without chimneys. Popular in Maharashtra, southern Gujarat, and parts of Odisha, these kilns operate with little regulation as they are often located far from towns.
Villages out of sight
The absence of reliable data on air pollution in rural India, home to 64 per cent of our population, perpetuates the assumption that air quality here meets national standards. This data gap obscures the true extent, scale, and geographical distribution of pollutants, undermining the government’s ability to implement effective preventive measures.
Also Read | A scripted performance in Chandigarh puts stubble burning in focus
The National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), launched in 2019, targets urban centres and has been limited in its interventions in rural India. The National Air Quality Monitoring Programme (NAMP), under the CPCB, aimed to increase manual monitoring stations from the existing 703 in 2023 stations to 1,500 stations by 2024; but as of December 2023, only 931 manual stations were operational. The stations cover all States, includes even smaller cities and towns, but 96 per cent of these stations are within city boundaries and do not cover rural areas.
Swagata Dey, a policy specialist in the air quality sector at The Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP), tells Frontline that the lack of regulatory-grade monitoring in rural areas adds to the perception that villages are ‘cleaner’. “Truth be told, rural areas have residential biomass burning, farm vehicles, and agro-residue burning. Rural areas both receive and contribute to air pollution in our cities. There have been pilots using sensors in rural areas, which have confirmed high levels of air pollution [in rural India]. So, we need to expand our monitoring capabilities for such rural areas.”
Abhijit Chatterjee, a researcher on air quality and pollution at the Bose Institute, Kolkata, and advisor to NCAP, stresses the need to incorporate rural areas into air quality monitoring efforts. “Rural areas need to be included, and for that, we should rely on remote-sensing and satellite-based data. It is essential to couple ground-based observation with satellite-based monitoring, as installing samplers in every corner of the country, whether rural or urban, is not feasible.”
Rukmini Devi would agree.
Dimple Behal is an urban planner, working at the intersection of inequality, development and environment.
Anuj Behal is an independent journalist and researcher focusing on urban justice, gender and migration in India
In the village of Chhatikara in Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura district, Rukmini Devi, a mother of two, sits outside her thatched home on a hazy January afternoon, fanning a makeshift stove, as smoke from smouldering cow dung cakes rises into the air and swirls around her. Her eldest son, barely six years old, coughs incessantly as he plays nearby. “His cough never leaves,” Rukmini says with a tired sigh. “Every winter, it gets worse.”
The air in Chhatikara carries more than just the chill of winter. Smoke from household kitchen fires and nearby fields, where agricultural waste is often burned, mingles with the emissions from vehicles passing along the Delhi-Agra highway.
Harbans Kaur, 46, from Singriwala village in Punjab’s Hoshiarpur district, vividly recalls the day inOctober 2024, whenshe traded her chulha (traditional stove) in the veranda for an LPG stove in the kitchen. “My sister-in-law and I mostly used the chulha with pathia (cow dung cakes) for breakfast,” she says. “But after Diwali, the smoke made it impossible to even sit in the veranda, so we had to shift indoors.”
Harbans is well aware of Delhi’s dire air quality, courtesy TV news. But her own reality is no different. “I had a sore throat for days, my eyes burnt when I stepped outside the house.”
Navjot, 28, who returned to his village Chukhiara in Jalandhar, Punjab, from Canada for his sister’s wedding in October last year, found himself grappling with an acrid stench that lingered for days. “My wife and I felt a sharp pain in our chest,” he says. “She came down with a severe fever that lasted days.”
Cities such as Delhi and Mumbai dominate the discourse on air pollution. But rural life is far from idyllic: air pollution-related ailments plague the rural population too. And several studies corroborate this phenomenon.
Northern malaise
The 2023 Climate Trends report on PM2.5 pollution in India, drawing on advanced satellite data, confirms that the annual surface particulate matter (PM2.5) levels across rural and urban areas continue to exceed India’s limit of 40 µg/m³, set by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), and remain drastically higher than the World Health Organization’s updated guideline of 5 µg/m³. PM2.5 is one of the most harmful air pollutants because it can travel deep into the lungs and bloodstream. The study found that the North India is most polluted with the PM 2.5 level of 74 ug/m3 and 58 ug/m3 in the rural region and 75 ug/m3 and 60 ug/m3 in the urban region for 2017 and 2022 respectively.
A 2020 study published in Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences by researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, and Colorado State University, US, used satellite-derived PM2.5 data to assess health impacts in urban and non-urban regions. The researchers found that outdoor air pollution in rural areas is just as severe as in the country’s urban centres. The Indo-Gangetic Plain—home to 9 percent of the global population—they found, is the most severely affected region in rural India, with population-weighted PM2.5 levels exceeding 100 µg/m³ across both urban and nonurban areas. This, the study says, has contributed to significant health impacts, including increased premature mortality from ischemic heart disease, strokes among adults, lower respiratory tract infections, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, and diabetes mellitus type. The nonurban areas experience higher overall mortality due to their larger populations.
Also Read | Season of smog: Not just Delhi, many north Indian cities are suffering
Another study conducted by IIT Kharagpur published in Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts in 2022 showed that 41 per cent of total nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution in India is emitted from rural areas. NO2 is 19 times more harmful than particulate matter and 25 times more damaging than sulphur dioxide (SO2). NO2, a potent greenhouse gas, traps heat 300 times more effectively than CO2. People who live in regions with high NO2, such as those near power plants, industries and cities, are prone to respiratory and cardiovascular disease-associated mortality independent of other criteria pollutants.
Satellite-derived PM2.5 data for the urban-rural grid across four regions in India reveals that the Northern region is the most polluted, with PM2.5 levels of 74 µg/m³ and 58 µg/m³ in rural areas, and 75 µg/m³ and 60 µg/m³ in urban areas for 2017 and 2022, respectively. Across all regions, there is minimal variation between urban and rural concentrations. However, rural PM2.5 levels tend to exceed urban levels in the Southern and Western regions, with some exceptions in certain years. Since 2017, the annual average PM2.5 levels in rural and urban areas of most states have followed a similar downward trend.
Deadly dung
As early as in 2003, CPCB released its Guidelines for Ambient Air Quality Monitoring, which differentiated between pollution in urban and rural areas. The guidelines addressed indoor air pollution in rural areas, caused by the burning of solid fuels such as dung and wood, which a significant proportion of the rural population still depends on. According to a research paper published in March 2023 in Environment International journalPM2.5 emissions from household sources contribute about 30 to 50 per cent of overall ambient PM2.5 levels in the country.
Over the years, there have been substantial efforts to reduce the use of solid fuels in rural kitchens, with varying degrees of success. In 2009, for instance, the Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy launched the National Biomass Cookstoves Initiative and installed some 27 lakh units by 2017. This was followed by the Unnat Chulha Abhiyan Programme in 2014. In this Programme both family and community cookstoves using biomass briquettes were distributed. The coverage of these programmes, however, was limited. Then came the widely publicised Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) in 2016, a nationwide initiative that aimed at providing clean cooking fuel, specifically liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), to women from socioeconomically disadvantaged households, to reduce household air pollution generated by burning solid fuels such as wood, coal, and biomass for cooking, heating, and lighting.
A key finding from the PMUY programme was that among all regions, rural areas have seen greater reductions in PM2.5 levels due to increased access to LPG. However, recent reports from Down to Earth, 2020 suggest that the scheme was not quite so successful. Access to LPG did not always lead to its consistent use beyond the first free cylinder. Cylinder refilling remained a significant issue: RTI data revealed that one in four Ujjwala Yojana beneficiaries received zero or only one LPG cylinder refill last year, despite the Rs.200 subsidy.
An International Energy Agency (IEA) report on India’s air quality in 2021 estimates that around 660 million people, just under half of India’s population, relied primarily on biomass for cooking and heating in 2019. When burned indoors in poorly ventilated spaces, these fuels expose households to indoor air pollution, which can have severe health consequences. India accounts for a quarter of the nearly 2.5 million premature deaths globally caused by indoor air pollution, says the IEA report, adding that efforts to address outdoor air pollution have been limited.
Stubble burning: Too close to home
Pollution from stubble burning is often seen as a major contributor to air pollution, especially PM2.5. in metros such as Delhi. However, its immediate effects are felt in nearby agricultural belts.
Renna, 46, of Kathar village in Jalandhar, Punjab, says, “Whenever we know there’s a farmer’s parali (stubble) fire after harvest, we make sure we close every door and window. First, fine dust from the turbines enters the house at harvest, and later, ash blows inside for days. Our eyes burn and we constantly cough.”
A 2021 TERI study on the impact of air quality from crop residue burning in the villages of Nabha block, Patiala district, Punjab, found that during the stubble burning period, the mean daily PM2.5 concentrations increased nearly fourfold (193-270 µg/m3). The study also noted a rise in respiratory complaints, such as wheezing, breathlessness on exertion, coughing in the mornings and at night, skin rashes, runny nose and itchiness of eyes across all age groups (10-60 years) during this period. It also found that women, children and the elderly are particularly vulnerable to pollution.
A farmer burns stubble after a paddy harvest, on the outskirts of Amritsar, on October 22, 2024. Studeies have shown that during the stubble burning period, there is a rise in respiratory complaints, such as wheezing, breathlessness on exertion, coughing in the mornings and at night.
| Photo Credit:
PTI
In December 2015, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) banned crop burning in Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. However, State environmental agencies and district authorities have failed to enforce the ban effectively. The ban remains impractical for farmers, many of whom lack the means or incentives to clear fields in alternative ways. Although the government provides subsidies for machines to help farmers plant new crops without removing dry stalks, these machines remain unaffordable for most.
India’s villages also bear the brunt of industrial pollution. With stricter regulations in cities and the availability of cheaper land in urban fringes, many heavy industries come to be located beyond city limits to rural areas, exposing villages to toxic air and effluents.
Most brick kilns and hot mix plants have been moved outside cities too. But only a few have adopted clean technology complying with CPCB norms. Among the most polluting are traditional kilns where firing is done in the open, without chimneys. Popular in Maharashtra, southern Gujarat, and parts of Odisha, these kilns operate with little regulation as they are often located far from towns.
Villages out of sight
The absence of reliable data on air pollution in rural India, home to 64 per cent of our population, perpetuates the assumption that air quality here meets national standards. This data gap obscures the true extent, scale, and geographical distribution of pollutants, undermining the government’s ability to implement effective preventive measures.
Also Read | A scripted performance in Chandigarh puts stubble burning in focus
The National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), launched in 2019, targets urban centres and has been limited in its interventions in rural India. The National Air Quality Monitoring Programme (NAMP), under the CPCB, aimed to increase manual monitoring stations from the existing 703 in 2023 stations to 1,500 stations by 2024; but as of December 2023, only 931 manual stations were operational. The stations cover all States, includes even smaller cities and towns, but 96 per cent of these stations are within city boundaries and do not cover rural areas.
Swagata Dey, a policy specialist in the air quality sector at The Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP), tells Frontline that the lack of regulatory-grade monitoring in rural areas adds to the perception that villages are ‘cleaner’. “Truth be told, rural areas have residential biomass burning, farm vehicles, and agro-residue burning. Rural areas both receive and contribute to air pollution in our cities. There have been pilots using sensors in rural areas, which have confirmed high levels of air pollution [in rural India]. So, we need to expand our monitoring capabilities for such rural areas.”
Abhijit Chatterjee, a researcher on air quality and pollution at the Bose Institute, Kolkata, and advisor to NCAP, stresses the need to incorporate rural areas into air quality monitoring efforts. “Rural areas need to be included, and for that, we should rely on remote-sensing and satellite-based data. It is essential to couple ground-based observation with satellite-based monitoring, as installing samplers in every corner of the country, whether rural or urban, is not feasible.”
Rukmini Devi would agree.
Dimple Behal is an urban planner, working at the intersection of inequality, development and environment.
Anuj Behal is an independent journalist and researcher focusing on urban justice, gender and migration in India
