Punjab, known as the ‘Granary of India’, is among the top three producers of food grain in the country, with over 11 million tonnes of rice and 16 million tonnes of wheat produced every year. The state relies heavily on the rice–wheat cropping pattern, wherein rice is cultivated during the kharif (summer) season and wheat during the rabi (winter) season. These two crops occupy over 80% of Punjab’s total cropped area. To handle this large-scale crop harvesting, farmers have transitioned to using mechanical harvesters, leaving stubble on the ground.

Air quality can be improved through well-designed air quality management plans that are effectively implemented. For this, we need to know the sources impacting a certain location; the emissions contributed by each source; the interventions that can reduce these emissions; the cost of those interventions; and once implemented, their effectiveness. The sources in question can be local (e.g., city traffic emissions), transboundary (e.g., an industry outside a city or sources in another state), or natural (e.g., desert dust or wildfires).

A social accounting matrix (SAM) can be used to estimate key macroeconomic indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP), gross value added (GVA), material input intensity, labour and capital intensity, average savings rate, per capita income of households, etc. They can also serve as a database for more complex models like the multiplier and computable general equilibrium (CGE) models.