Jagadale, S. R., and, Shaikh, J. M, ‘Governmentality and Marketing System Failure: The Case of Stubble Burning and Climate Change in Neoliberal India’, Journal of Macromarketing, 2025 https://doi.org/10.1177/02761467251318608
Come November, the Indo-Gangetic Plain is often clouded in a pall of pollution. The cessation of monsoon winds from the preceding four months and a drop in temperatures lead to pollutants from year-round sources, such as vehicles, power plants, construction dust and other suspended particulate matter, persisting as a black shroud because of the formation of an ‘inversion layer’. This means that these particles aren’t ‘flushed out’ from the region by the stronger winds at the higher atmospheric reaches. Add to this the contribution of stubble burning. Particulate matter from the burning of farm stubble — rice chaff — by farmers in Punjab, and to a smaller extent Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh — is added to this haze, worsening the already noxious air quality in Delhi and several other north Indian cities. Farm stubble is burnt in October and November because it is the cheapest method employed by farmers to prepare their soil for Rabi wheat.
A wealth of correlational studies in the last two decades have linked particulate matter from stubble burning and winds originating from Punjab and Haryana to pollution levels in Delhi. In the case of Punjab, during winter, 54% of the time the wind from the State blew towards Delhi, it led to a spike in air pollution; when the wind originated from Haryana, the figure stood at 27%. Every additional fire incident was correlated with an increase in PM2.5 levels of 12.44 units. Studies over the years, most recently in 2023 by a consortium of IIT Kanpur, IIT Delhi, TERI, and Airshed, Kanpur, found that from mid-October to the end of November 2022, the role of stubble burning to air quality was on average 22% and peaked to as much as 35%. This is fairly consistent with previous studies that have estimated the contribution of stubble burning to range from 20%-40%. Many studies have also examined causes for farmers actions. The prescriptions also often analyse what may be changed that could incentivise farmers to cease from such burning.
How policy affects pollution
A new study by researchers Sujit Raghunathrao Jagadale and Javed M. Shaikh at the Indian Institute of Management, Amritsar analyses the problem from the lens of ‘governmentality’ and market failure. ‘Governmentality’ is a concept by French sociologist and philosopher, Michel Foucault that refers to how institutions of power — in this case the government — rather than employing explicitly coercive measures induce citizens to adopt self-policing or self-regulating behaviour to govern themselves.
Their study shows that governmentality can end up being counterproductive. The state’s implicit directive to farmers to keep increasing grain output ends up promoting “suboptimal behaviours, like stubble burning, among farmers within India’s struggling agricultural marketing system.”
India’s “neoliberal policies,” such as the Minimum Support Price (MSP) system, paradoxically exacerbates the issue. While MSP guarantees procurement prices for staple crops like wheat and rice, it ends up incentivising mono-cropping, leaving farmers dependent on short-term, unsustainable methods. The study argues that state and market forces create a cycle of marginalisation, pushing farmers toward stubble burning as a survival tactic.
The authors relied on semi-structured interviews with 18 farmers across three Punjab districts (Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Tarn Taran) and an analysis of national newspaper articles. The farmers interviewed ranged from smallholders (2–5 acres) to larger landowners, capturing diverse economic backgrounds. Interviews focused on farmers’ decision-making, perceptions of state policies, and interactions with market actors. What they found was that the Union government’s MSP policy prioritises wheat and rice production, discouraging crop diversification. Farmers face contradictory signals: the state penalises stubble burning but also offers no affordable alternatives. Farmers also viewed the state as favouring urban-industrial interests (“India”) over rural communities (“Bharat”). For example, while stubble burning is vilified, industrial pollution is overlooked. The farmers saw themselves as reliant on middlemen (arhatias) who control crop prices, credit access, and market linkages. Farmers sell produce at artificially low prices set by arhtias, who profit by reselling at market rates. Debt bondage is common: farmers borrow from arhtias for seeds or emergencies, cementing dependency. One farmer noted, “Commission agents deduct expenses from our next income, trapping us in cycles of debt.” Stagnant MSP rates (for example, wheat prices rose only 5% over a decade) fail to cover rising cultivation costs, including labour and equipment. The study’s novel contribution is to reposition stubble burning not as individual negligence but as a systemic outcome of distorted marketing systems and neo-liberal governance.
Plausible remedies
As solutions, they suggest that remedial interventions primarily focus on developing a market for stubble and stubble-based products, such as fodder, energy products like pellets and packaging materials, aiming to boost farmers’ income while simultaneously addressing climate change challenges. For this approach to be successful, efforts are needed to strengthen the value chain through diverse technologies within an enabling ecosystem. Currently, there is a significant lack of an efficient market mechanism for farm-waste, underscoring the need for policy and market interventions to bridge this gap. Although such interventions may require time to be implemented effectively, they necessitate the involvement of stakeholders, including state and market actors, across the value chain.
Regulatory interventions could be conceptualised at three levels: prohibiting stubble burning, managing it through selective permits, and promoting stubble usage by incentivising stubble-based products. Here, active participation from state actors is critical.
A key intervention involves ensuring that farmers receive fair prices for their produce by addressing existing inefficiencies within the market system. The commodities market in India is deeply embedded in socio-political structures, as previously discussed, and requires state-led efforts to enhance price transparency and fairness to support farm incomes.
Moreover, the socio-economic pressure on farmers to engage in aspirational consumption — often detrimental due to limited income —should be acknowledged. Addressing this issue may benefit from fostering cultural change, where socio-cultural organisations, including religious groups, could play a role in de-marketing non-essential aspirational consumption, the authors conclude.
Published – April 15, 2025 08:30 am IST