The burning truth: As farmers set fire to fields, Delhi braces for smog

The World Health Organisation said earlier this year India was home to the world's 14 most polluted cities, with Delhi ranked the sixth most polluted

Hours after a mechanised harvester chugged through the rice paddy, flames and a thick plume of black smoke rose into the twilight sky in India's northern Haryana state as farmers burned the residue to prepare for the next season's planting.
 

Similar fires seen by a Reuters reporter last week in the nation's farm states of Haryana and neighbouring Punjab suggest that efforts by authorities to stave off a massive spike in pollution in nearby New Delhi in the next few weeks may fail.
 

Late last year, Delhi and a large part of northern India were covered in a dangerous toxic