Pollution Control & Sustainable Environment

Stubble burning in North India has been a major contributing factor to the growing menace of air pollution in the National Capital Region of India for the last two decades. Though the health aspects of air pollution due to stubble burning have been extensively studied, its economic costs due to environmental damage have not been studied holistically.  We attempt to estimate these costs using Instrumental Variable (IV) Analysis. Using VIIRS Data from NASA, we count the number of field fires per day in Punjab and Haryana during the September-December harvesting season, called FIRECOUNT. We use FIRECOUNT as the IV to estimate the concentration of PM2.5 and PM10 due to stubble burning.