The Women Going From Farm To Farm To Help Stop Stubble Burning

"It's a win-win situation for farmers," said Dhruv Sawhney, chief operating officer of a digital platform promoting sustainable agriculture

Sanju is on a mission. For weeks, she has travelled from village to village, urging farmers to stop burning stubble from harvested rice crops near New Delhi.

As winds slow during the winter months, a poisonous haze collects over northern India. During the worst stretches, the region's air pollution can reach multiple times the global safety threshold. Stubble burning is one of the leading causes of the smog.

Sanju, 24, who goes by one name, is among several hundred gig workers in Haryana -- all of them women -- trying to reverse that trend. She encourages farmers to spray a white substance on their fields to decompose crop residue, rather than set it ablaze. Her work forms part of one of the most ambitious attempts to eliminate stubble burning in India.

"It's a win-win situation for farmers," said Dhruv Sawhney, the chief operating officer of nurture.farm, a digital platform promoting sustainable agriculture that is overseeing the project. In addition to hiring on-the-ground messengers like Sanju, his group provided the decomposer for free to 25,000 farmers this year.