By Aasheerwad Dwivedi and Aditya Sinha

The idea of unintended consequences is a powerful reminder of how even our best intentions can lead to unexpected outcomes. Economists have understood it for centuries, but it often gets lost in the noise of politics and policymaking. Decisions that seem right in the moment can cause ripples in ways no one saw coming. The latest Economic Survey offers a stark example of this: Delhi’s infamous air pollution — a problem born, at least in part, from policies that may have seemed like good ideas at the time.

Chapter 11 of the Economic Survey, Tracking Development through Satellite Images and Cartography, presents satellite imagery of Moga district, Punjab, showing a stark shift in the kharif crop cycle between 2005 and 2021. In June-July 2005, farms were moderately vegetated, but by 2021, vegetation during these months had nearly vanished. This reveals a two-to-three-week delay in kharif sowing, causing its harvest to overlap with rabi sowing in November. To prepare fields quickly for rabi crops, farmers resort to stubble burning, a major contributor to Delhi-National Capital Region’s (NCR) toxic air. This overlap isn’t a natural evolution of farming practices but the direct result of a Punjab government policy designed to address groundwater depletion. The unintended fallout of this policy is now choking millions.

The food scarcity of the 1960s brought the Green Revolution........

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