Sanju is on a mission. For weeks, she has traveled from village to village, urging farmers in India to stop burning stubble from harvested rice crops near New Delhi, the country’s capital. 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 the state of 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 […]