Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 73
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Code Context


        trigger_error($message, E_USER_DEPRECATED);

    }
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 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php.'
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deprecationWarning - CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311
Cake\Http\ServerRequest::offsetGet() - CORE/src/Http/ServerRequest.php, line 2421
App\Controller\ArtileDetailController::printArticle() - APP/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line 73
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Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 120
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Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
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Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51
Cake\Http\Server::run() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 98

Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 74
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Code Context


        trigger_error($message, E_USER_DEPRECATED);

    }
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 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php.'
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deprecationWarning - CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311
Cake\Http\ServerRequest::offsetGet() - CORE/src/Http/ServerRequest.php, line 2421
App\Controller\ArtileDetailController::printArticle() - APP/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line 74
Cake\Controller\Controller::invokeAction() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 610
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 120
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51
Cake\Http\Server::run() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 98

Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Code Context
            if (Configure::read('debug')) {

                trigger_error($message, E_USER_WARNING);

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-Business Standard&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Events after a farmer&#039;s suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a young man from Rajasthan at an Aam Aadmi Party rally in New Delhi, perfectly encapsulates the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture today. The discovery that his may not have been a textbook case of suicide caused by rural distress barely interrupted the three-ring circus that ensued.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A shallow pool of cliche and false assumptions suits everyone - a commentariat that has made no serious investment in understanding the complex tensions that drive India&#039;s agricultural economy, and a political class that uses this analytical vacuum to evade responsibility for rural distress.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Take the prime minister&#039;s stirring call, asking political parties to unite to find a solution. On the face of it, the immediate reasons driving the current crisis - one, crop damage and two, falling commodity prices - hardly require booking Vigyan Bhawan for a three-day confabulation. The first can be addressed by significantly raising the compensation amount for crop damage, which, even after the much-ballyhooed 50 per cent increase over the previous slab, falls pitifully short of what farmers are investing. (In The Indian Express, Ashok Gulati suggests the enhanced compensation will cover roughly less than 50 per cent of the per hectare costs incurred by wheat farmers. Separately, we found it will not compensate cotton farmers more than 10 per cent of their expenses.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As a medium-term buffer against crop damage (which climate change threatens to make a regular feature), the prime minister may want to consider Gulati&#039;s suggestion for the government to significantly underwrite crop insurance. The current arrangement requires the farmer to pay a very high component of the premium, one of the factors why only a small fraction of agriculturists (5 per cent) have opted for insurance cover. To head off any potential rumblings from this governments &#039;suited-booted&#039; support base, Narendra Modi only needs to invoke the US, which, as Gulati points out, underwrites 70 per cent of crop insurance premium.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As for the falling commodity prices, this may have been the time, among other steps, to implement Modi&#039;s election-time promise of using the Swaminathan Commission formula to fix minimum support prices or MSP. (The commission suggested MSP should be at least 50 per cent of the farmers cost of production.) But the promise of generous price support has been dumped without suitable explanation. Instead, the government seems now enamoured of the Shanta Kumar committee report, which asks for the scaling down of the public distribution system (PDS). At any other time, a debate on revisiting food subsidies may be well in order, but someone needs to tell the government that now is perhaps not the best time to send out signals - overt and tacit - that will slow down the pace of procurement.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Perhaps, that someone, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, could be chief ministers, even of Bharatiya Janata Party-run states. Raman Singh, for instance, whose successful turnaround of Chhattisgarh&#039;s PDS network is based on the very same ingredients - like near-universal coverage - that the Shanta Kumar report seeks to scrap. Or Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for instance, who is among a group of chief ministers that has written to the Centre expressing concern at the acute slowdown in NREGA disbursals, delays that have hit an all-time high in the past eight months.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In all fairness, there was an attempt, in the hysteria of the past week, to use facts instead of hyperbole to corner the government for its somewhat disingenuous concern for the Indian farmer. Except the intervention came from the itinerant vice-president of the Congress, a party whose track record, contrary to Rahul Gandhi&#039;s exertions, belies its self-description as the Chief Saviour of Indian Peasantry. Yes, the Congress ordered a one-time exponential raise in MSP. Except it was in 2008. Seven years ago. Taking a longer view, since the nineties, the Grand Old Party has presided over a decline in virtually all the myriad support systems required to keep agriculture afloat: rural credit, public investment in agriculture, insurance cover and so on.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
None of this would be news to the political establishment; the gradual chipping away at the edifice of the rural economy predicates some sort of knowledge of that structure. But it is more convenient for everyone to debate the troubles of Indian agriculture as if it were some kind of karmic malaise, and not the outcome of flawed decision-making.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
		&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;Business Standard, 27 April, 2015, http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/sreenivasan-jain-kissa-kisan-ka-evading-blame-for-rural-distress-115042700978_1.html&#039;,
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-Business Standard

Events after a farmer&#039;s suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture

The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;-Business Standard&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;Events after a farmer&#039;s suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a young man from Rajasthan at an Aam Aadmi Party rally in New Delhi, perfectly encapsulates the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture today. The discovery that his may not have been a textbook case of suicide caused by rural distress barely interrupted the three-ring circus that ensued.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A shallow pool of cliche and false assumptions suits everyone - a commentariat that has made no serious investment in understanding the complex tensions that drive India&#039;s agricultural economy, and a political class that uses this analytical vacuum to evade responsibility for rural distress.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Take the prime minister&#039;s stirring call, asking political parties to unite to find a solution. On the face of it, the immediate reasons driving the current crisis - one, crop damage and two, falling commodity prices - hardly require booking Vigyan Bhawan for a three-day confabulation. The first can be addressed by significantly raising the compensation amount for crop damage, which, even after the much-ballyhooed 50 per cent increase over the previous slab, falls pitifully short of what farmers are investing. (In The Indian Express, Ashok Gulati suggests the enhanced compensation will cover roughly less than 50 per cent of the per hectare costs incurred by wheat farmers. Separately, we found it will not compensate cotton farmers more than 10 per cent of their expenses.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As a medium-term buffer against crop damage (which climate change threatens to make a regular feature), the prime minister may want to consider Gulati&#039;s suggestion for the government to significantly underwrite crop insurance. The current arrangement requires the farmer to pay a very high component of the premium, one of the factors why only a small fraction of agriculturists (5 per cent) have opted for insurance cover. To head off any potential rumblings from this governments &#039;suited-booted&#039; support base, Narendra Modi only needs to invoke the US, which, as Gulati points out, underwrites 70 per cent of crop insurance premium.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As for the falling commodity prices, this may have been the time, among other steps, to implement Modi&#039;s election-time promise of using the Swaminathan Commission formula to fix minimum support prices or MSP. (The commission suggested MSP should be at least 50 per cent of the farmers cost of production.) But the promise of generous price support has been dumped without suitable explanation. Instead, the government seems now enamoured of the Shanta Kumar committee report, which asks for the scaling down of the public distribution system (PDS). At any other time, a debate on revisiting food subsidies may be well in order, but someone needs to tell the government that now is perhaps not the best time to send out signals - overt and tacit - that will slow down the pace of procurement.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Perhaps, that someone, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, could be chief ministers, even of Bharatiya Janata Party-run states. Raman Singh, for instance, whose successful turnaround of Chhattisgarh&#039;s PDS network is based on the very same ingredients - like near-universal coverage - that the Shanta Kumar report seeks to scrap. Or Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for instance, who is among a group of chief ministers that has written to the Centre expressing concern at the acute slowdown in NREGA disbursals, delays that have hit an all-time high in the past eight months.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In all fairness, there was an attempt, in the hysteria of the past week, to use facts instead of hyperbole to corner the government for its somewhat disingenuous concern for the Indian farmer. Except the intervention came from the itinerant vice-president of the Congress, a party whose track record, contrary to Rahul Gandhi&#039;s exertions, belies its self-description as the Chief Saviour of Indian Peasantry. Yes, the Congress ordered a one-time exponential raise in MSP. Except it was in 2008. Seven years ago. Taking a longer view, since the nineties, the Grand Old Party has presided over a decline in virtually all the myriad support systems required to keep agriculture afloat: rural credit, public investment in agriculture, insurance cover and so on.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;None of this would be news to the political establishment; the gradual chipping away at the edifice of the rural economy predicates some sort of knowledge of that structure. But it is more convenient for everyone to debate the troubles of Indian agriculture as if it were some kind of karmic malaise, and not the outcome of flawed decision-making.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
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-Business Standard&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Events after a farmer&#039;s suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a young man from Rajasthan at an Aam Aadmi Party rally in New Delhi, perfectly encapsulates the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture today. The discovery that his may not have been a textbook case of suicide caused by rural distress barely interrupted the three-ring circus that ensued.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A shallow pool of cliche and false assumptions suits everyone - a commentariat that has made no serious investment in understanding the complex tensions that drive India&#039;s agricultural economy, and a political class that uses this analytical vacuum to evade responsibility for rural distress.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Take the prime minister&#039;s stirring call, asking political parties to unite to find a solution. On the face of it, the immediate reasons driving the current crisis - one, crop damage and two, falling commodity prices - hardly require booking Vigyan Bhawan for a three-day confabulation. The first can be addressed by significantly raising the compensation amount for crop damage, which, even after the much-ballyhooed 50 per cent increase over the previous slab, falls pitifully short of what farmers are investing. (In The Indian Express, Ashok Gulati suggests the enhanced compensation will cover roughly less than 50 per cent of the per hectare costs incurred by wheat farmers. Separately, we found it will not compensate cotton farmers more than 10 per cent of their expenses.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As a medium-term buffer against crop damage (which climate change threatens to make a regular feature), the prime minister may want to consider Gulati&#039;s suggestion for the government to significantly underwrite crop insurance. The current arrangement requires the farmer to pay a very high component of the premium, one of the factors why only a small fraction of agriculturists (5 per cent) have opted for insurance cover. To head off any potential rumblings from this governments &#039;suited-booted&#039; support base, Narendra Modi only needs to invoke the US, which, as Gulati points out, underwrites 70 per cent of crop insurance premium.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As for the falling commodity prices, this may have been the time, among other steps, to implement Modi&#039;s election-time promise of using the Swaminathan Commission formula to fix minimum support prices or MSP. (The commission suggested MSP should be at least 50 per cent of the farmers cost of production.) But the promise of generous price support has been dumped without suitable explanation. Instead, the government seems now enamoured of the Shanta Kumar committee report, which asks for the scaling down of the public distribution system (PDS). At any other time, a debate on revisiting food subsidies may be well in order, but someone needs to tell the government that now is perhaps not the best time to send out signals - overt and tacit - that will slow down the pace of procurement.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Perhaps, that someone, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, could be chief ministers, even of Bharatiya Janata Party-run states. Raman Singh, for instance, whose successful turnaround of Chhattisgarh&#039;s PDS network is based on the very same ingredients - like near-universal coverage - that the Shanta Kumar report seeks to scrap. Or Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for instance, who is among a group of chief ministers that has written to the Centre expressing concern at the acute slowdown in NREGA disbursals, delays that have hit an all-time high in the past eight months.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In all fairness, there was an attempt, in the hysteria of the past week, to use facts instead of hyperbole to corner the government for its somewhat disingenuous concern for the Indian farmer. Except the intervention came from the itinerant vice-president of the Congress, a party whose track record, contrary to Rahul Gandhi&#039;s exertions, belies its self-description as the Chief Saviour of Indian Peasantry. Yes, the Congress ordered a one-time exponential raise in MSP. Except it was in 2008. Seven years ago. Taking a longer view, since the nineties, the Grand Old Party has presided over a decline in virtually all the myriad support systems required to keep agriculture afloat: rural credit, public investment in agriculture, insurance cover and so on.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
None of this would be news to the political establishment; the gradual chipping away at the edifice of the rural economy predicates some sort of knowledge of that structure. But it is more convenient for everyone to debate the troubles of Indian agriculture as if it were some kind of karmic malaise, and not the outcome of flawed decision-making.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;Business Standard, 27 April, 2015, http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/sreenivasan-jain-kissa-kisan-ka-evading-blame-for-rural-distress-115042700978_1.html&#039;,
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-Business Standard

Events after a farmer&#039;s suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture

The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a...&#039;
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The discovery that his may not have been a textbook case of suicide caused by rural distress barely interrupted the three-ring circus that ensued.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A shallow pool of cliche and false assumptions suits everyone - a commentariat that has made no serious investment in understanding the complex tensions that drive India&#039;s agricultural economy, and a political class that uses this analytical vacuum to evade responsibility for rural distress.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Take the prime minister&#039;s stirring call, asking political parties to unite to find a solution. On the face of it, the immediate reasons driving the current crisis - one, crop damage and two, falling commodity prices - hardly require booking Vigyan Bhawan for a three-day confabulation. The first can be addressed by significantly raising the compensation amount for crop damage, which, even after the much-ballyhooed 50 per cent increase over the previous slab, falls pitifully short of what farmers are investing. (In The Indian Express, Ashok Gulati suggests the enhanced compensation will cover roughly less than 50 per cent of the per hectare costs incurred by wheat farmers. Separately, we found it will not compensate cotton farmers more than 10 per cent of their expenses.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As a medium-term buffer against crop damage (which climate change threatens to make a regular feature), the prime minister may want to consider Gulati&#039;s suggestion for the government to significantly underwrite crop insurance. The current arrangement requires the farmer to pay a very high component of the premium, one of the factors why only a small fraction of agriculturists (5 per cent) have opted for insurance cover. To head off any potential rumblings from this governments &#039;suited-booted&#039; support base, Narendra Modi only needs to invoke the US, which, as Gulati points out, underwrites 70 per cent of crop insurance premium.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As for the falling commodity prices, this may have been the time, among other steps, to implement Modi&#039;s election-time promise of using the Swaminathan Commission formula to fix minimum support prices or MSP. (The commission suggested MSP should be at least 50 per cent of the farmers cost of production.) But the promise of generous price support has been dumped without suitable explanation. Instead, the government seems now enamoured of the Shanta Kumar committee report, which asks for the scaling down of the public distribution system (PDS). At any other time, a debate on revisiting food subsidies may be well in order, but someone needs to tell the government that now is perhaps not the best time to send out signals - overt and tacit - that will slow down the pace of procurement.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Perhaps, that someone, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, could be chief ministers, even of Bharatiya Janata Party-run states. Raman Singh, for instance, whose successful turnaround of Chhattisgarh&#039;s PDS network is based on the very same ingredients - like near-universal coverage - that the Shanta Kumar report seeks to scrap. Or Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for instance, who is among a group of chief ministers that has written to the Centre expressing concern at the acute slowdown in NREGA disbursals, delays that have hit an all-time high in the past eight months.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In all fairness, there was an attempt, in the hysteria of the past week, to use facts instead of hyperbole to corner the government for its somewhat disingenuous concern for the Indian farmer. Except the intervention came from the itinerant vice-president of the Congress, a party whose track record, contrary to Rahul Gandhi&#039;s exertions, belies its self-description as the Chief Saviour of Indian Peasantry. Yes, the Congress ordered a one-time exponential raise in MSP. Except it was in 2008. Seven years ago. Taking a longer view, since the nineties, the Grand Old Party has presided over a decline in virtually all the myriad support systems required to keep agriculture afloat: rural credit, public investment in agriculture, insurance cover and so on.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;None of this would be news to the political establishment; the gradual chipping away at the edifice of the rural economy predicates some sort of knowledge of that structure. But it is more convenient for everyone to debate the troubles of Indian agriculture as if it were some kind of karmic malaise, and not the outcome of flawed decision-making.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
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Events after a farmer's suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture

The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a..."/>
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                <strong>Kissa kisan ka - Evading blame for rural distress -Sreenivasan Jain</strong></h1>
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                <div align="justify">-Business Standard<br /><br /><em>Events after a farmer's suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture<br /></em><br />The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a young man from Rajasthan at an Aam Aadmi Party rally in New Delhi, perfectly encapsulates the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture today. The discovery that his may not have been a textbook case of suicide caused by rural distress barely interrupted the three-ring circus that ensued.<br /><br />A shallow pool of cliche and false assumptions suits everyone - a commentariat that has made no serious investment in understanding the complex tensions that drive India's agricultural economy, and a political class that uses this analytical vacuum to evade responsibility for rural distress.<br /><br />Take the prime minister's stirring call, asking political parties to unite to find a solution. On the face of it, the immediate reasons driving the current crisis - one, crop damage and two, falling commodity prices - hardly require booking Vigyan Bhawan for a three-day confabulation. The first can be addressed by significantly raising the compensation amount for crop damage, which, even after the much-ballyhooed 50 per cent increase over the previous slab, falls pitifully short of what farmers are investing. (In The Indian Express, Ashok Gulati suggests the enhanced compensation will cover roughly less than 50 per cent of the per hectare costs incurred by wheat farmers. Separately, we found it will not compensate cotton farmers more than 10 per cent of their expenses.)<br /><br />As a medium-term buffer against crop damage (which climate change threatens to make a regular feature), the prime minister may want to consider Gulati's suggestion for the government to significantly underwrite crop insurance. The current arrangement requires the farmer to pay a very high component of the premium, one of the factors why only a small fraction of agriculturists (5 per cent) have opted for insurance cover. To head off any potential rumblings from this governments 'suited-booted' support base, Narendra Modi only needs to invoke the US, which, as Gulati points out, underwrites 70 per cent of crop insurance premium.<br /><br />As for the falling commodity prices, this may have been the time, among other steps, to implement Modi's election-time promise of using the Swaminathan Commission formula to fix minimum support prices or MSP. (The commission suggested MSP should be at least 50 per cent of the farmers cost of production.) But the promise of generous price support has been dumped without suitable explanation. Instead, the government seems now enamoured of the Shanta Kumar committee report, which asks for the scaling down of the public distribution system (PDS). At any other time, a debate on revisiting food subsidies may be well in order, but someone needs to tell the government that now is perhaps not the best time to send out signals - overt and tacit - that will slow down the pace of procurement.<br /><br />Perhaps, that someone, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, could be chief ministers, even of Bharatiya Janata Party-run states. Raman Singh, for instance, whose successful turnaround of Chhattisgarh's PDS network is based on the very same ingredients - like near-universal coverage - that the Shanta Kumar report seeks to scrap. Or Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for instance, who is among a group of chief ministers that has written to the Centre expressing concern at the acute slowdown in NREGA disbursals, delays that have hit an all-time high in the past eight months.<br /><br />In all fairness, there was an attempt, in the hysteria of the past week, to use facts instead of hyperbole to corner the government for its somewhat disingenuous concern for the Indian farmer. Except the intervention came from the itinerant vice-president of the Congress, a party whose track record, contrary to Rahul Gandhi's exertions, belies its self-description as the Chief Saviour of Indian Peasantry. Yes, the Congress ordered a one-time exponential raise in MSP. Except it was in 2008. Seven years ago. Taking a longer view, since the nineties, the Grand Old Party has presided over a decline in virtually all the myriad support systems required to keep agriculture afloat: rural credit, public investment in agriculture, insurance cover and so on.<br /><br />None of this would be news to the political establishment; the gradual chipping away at the edifice of the rural economy predicates some sort of knowledge of that structure. But it is more convenient for everyone to debate the troubles of Indian agriculture as if it were some kind of karmic malaise, and not the outcome of flawed decision-making.<br /><br /><em>The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7</em></div>               </font>
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-Business Standard&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Events after a farmer&#039;s suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a young man from Rajasthan at an Aam Aadmi Party rally in New Delhi, perfectly encapsulates the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture today. The discovery that his may not have been a textbook case of suicide caused by rural distress barely interrupted the three-ring circus that ensued.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A shallow pool of cliche and false assumptions suits everyone - a commentariat that has made no serious investment in understanding the complex tensions that drive India&#039;s agricultural economy, and a political class that uses this analytical vacuum to evade responsibility for rural distress.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Take the prime minister&#039;s stirring call, asking political parties to unite to find a solution. On the face of it, the immediate reasons driving the current crisis - one, crop damage and two, falling commodity prices - hardly require booking Vigyan Bhawan for a three-day confabulation. The first can be addressed by significantly raising the compensation amount for crop damage, which, even after the much-ballyhooed 50 per cent increase over the previous slab, falls pitifully short of what farmers are investing. (In The Indian Express, Ashok Gulati suggests the enhanced compensation will cover roughly less than 50 per cent of the per hectare costs incurred by wheat farmers. Separately, we found it will not compensate cotton farmers more than 10 per cent of their expenses.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As a medium-term buffer against crop damage (which climate change threatens to make a regular feature), the prime minister may want to consider Gulati&#039;s suggestion for the government to significantly underwrite crop insurance. The current arrangement requires the farmer to pay a very high component of the premium, one of the factors why only a small fraction of agriculturists (5 per cent) have opted for insurance cover. To head off any potential rumblings from this governments &#039;suited-booted&#039; support base, Narendra Modi only needs to invoke the US, which, as Gulati points out, underwrites 70 per cent of crop insurance premium.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As for the falling commodity prices, this may have been the time, among other steps, to implement Modi&#039;s election-time promise of using the Swaminathan Commission formula to fix minimum support prices or MSP. (The commission suggested MSP should be at least 50 per cent of the farmers cost of production.) But the promise of generous price support has been dumped without suitable explanation. Instead, the government seems now enamoured of the Shanta Kumar committee report, which asks for the scaling down of the public distribution system (PDS). At any other time, a debate on revisiting food subsidies may be well in order, but someone needs to tell the government that now is perhaps not the best time to send out signals - overt and tacit - that will slow down the pace of procurement.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Perhaps, that someone, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, could be chief ministers, even of Bharatiya Janata Party-run states. Raman Singh, for instance, whose successful turnaround of Chhattisgarh&#039;s PDS network is based on the very same ingredients - like near-universal coverage - that the Shanta Kumar report seeks to scrap. Or Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for instance, who is among a group of chief ministers that has written to the Centre expressing concern at the acute slowdown in NREGA disbursals, delays that have hit an all-time high in the past eight months.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In all fairness, there was an attempt, in the hysteria of the past week, to use facts instead of hyperbole to corner the government for its somewhat disingenuous concern for the Indian farmer. Except the intervention came from the itinerant vice-president of the Congress, a party whose track record, contrary to Rahul Gandhi&#039;s exertions, belies its self-description as the Chief Saviour of Indian Peasantry. Yes, the Congress ordered a one-time exponential raise in MSP. Except it was in 2008. Seven years ago. Taking a longer view, since the nineties, the Grand Old Party has presided over a decline in virtually all the myriad support systems required to keep agriculture afloat: rural credit, public investment in agriculture, insurance cover and so on.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
None of this would be news to the political establishment; the gradual chipping away at the edifice of the rural economy predicates some sort of knowledge of that structure. But it is more convenient for everyone to debate the troubles of Indian agriculture as if it were some kind of karmic malaise, and not the outcome of flawed decision-making.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
		&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;Business Standard, 27 April, 2015, http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/sreenivasan-jain-kissa-kisan-ka-evading-blame-for-rural-distress-115042700978_1.html&#039;,
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-Business Standard

Events after a farmer&#039;s suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture

The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;-Business Standard&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;Events after a farmer&#039;s suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a young man from Rajasthan at an Aam Aadmi Party rally in New Delhi, perfectly encapsulates the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture today. The discovery that his may not have been a textbook case of suicide caused by rural distress barely interrupted the three-ring circus that ensued.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A shallow pool of cliche and false assumptions suits everyone - a commentariat that has made no serious investment in understanding the complex tensions that drive India&#039;s agricultural economy, and a political class that uses this analytical vacuum to evade responsibility for rural distress.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Take the prime minister&#039;s stirring call, asking political parties to unite to find a solution. On the face of it, the immediate reasons driving the current crisis - one, crop damage and two, falling commodity prices - hardly require booking Vigyan Bhawan for a three-day confabulation. The first can be addressed by significantly raising the compensation amount for crop damage, which, even after the much-ballyhooed 50 per cent increase over the previous slab, falls pitifully short of what farmers are investing. (In The Indian Express, Ashok Gulati suggests the enhanced compensation will cover roughly less than 50 per cent of the per hectare costs incurred by wheat farmers. Separately, we found it will not compensate cotton farmers more than 10 per cent of their expenses.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As a medium-term buffer against crop damage (which climate change threatens to make a regular feature), the prime minister may want to consider Gulati&#039;s suggestion for the government to significantly underwrite crop insurance. The current arrangement requires the farmer to pay a very high component of the premium, one of the factors why only a small fraction of agriculturists (5 per cent) have opted for insurance cover. To head off any potential rumblings from this governments &#039;suited-booted&#039; support base, Narendra Modi only needs to invoke the US, which, as Gulati points out, underwrites 70 per cent of crop insurance premium.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As for the falling commodity prices, this may have been the time, among other steps, to implement Modi&#039;s election-time promise of using the Swaminathan Commission formula to fix minimum support prices or MSP. (The commission suggested MSP should be at least 50 per cent of the farmers cost of production.) But the promise of generous price support has been dumped without suitable explanation. Instead, the government seems now enamoured of the Shanta Kumar committee report, which asks for the scaling down of the public distribution system (PDS). At any other time, a debate on revisiting food subsidies may be well in order, but someone needs to tell the government that now is perhaps not the best time to send out signals - overt and tacit - that will slow down the pace of procurement.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Perhaps, that someone, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, could be chief ministers, even of Bharatiya Janata Party-run states. Raman Singh, for instance, whose successful turnaround of Chhattisgarh&#039;s PDS network is based on the very same ingredients - like near-universal coverage - that the Shanta Kumar report seeks to scrap. Or Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for instance, who is among a group of chief ministers that has written to the Centre expressing concern at the acute slowdown in NREGA disbursals, delays that have hit an all-time high in the past eight months.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In all fairness, there was an attempt, in the hysteria of the past week, to use facts instead of hyperbole to corner the government for its somewhat disingenuous concern for the Indian farmer. Except the intervention came from the itinerant vice-president of the Congress, a party whose track record, contrary to Rahul Gandhi&#039;s exertions, belies its self-description as the Chief Saviour of Indian Peasantry. Yes, the Congress ordered a one-time exponential raise in MSP. Except it was in 2008. Seven years ago. Taking a longer view, since the nineties, the Grand Old Party has presided over a decline in virtually all the myriad support systems required to keep agriculture afloat: rural credit, public investment in agriculture, insurance cover and so on.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;None of this would be news to the political establishment; the gradual chipping away at the edifice of the rural economy predicates some sort of knowledge of that structure. But it is more convenient for everyone to debate the troubles of Indian agriculture as if it were some kind of karmic malaise, and not the outcome of flawed decision-making.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
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	&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;Kissa kisan ka - Evading blame for rural distress -Sreenivasan Jain&#039;,
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-Business Standard&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Events after a farmer&#039;s suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a young man from Rajasthan at an Aam Aadmi Party rally in New Delhi, perfectly encapsulates the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture today. The discovery that his may not have been a textbook case of suicide caused by rural distress barely interrupted the three-ring circus that ensued.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A shallow pool of cliche and false assumptions suits everyone - a commentariat that has made no serious investment in understanding the complex tensions that drive India&#039;s agricultural economy, and a political class that uses this analytical vacuum to evade responsibility for rural distress.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Take the prime minister&#039;s stirring call, asking political parties to unite to find a solution. On the face of it, the immediate reasons driving the current crisis - one, crop damage and two, falling commodity prices - hardly require booking Vigyan Bhawan for a three-day confabulation. The first can be addressed by significantly raising the compensation amount for crop damage, which, even after the much-ballyhooed 50 per cent increase over the previous slab, falls pitifully short of what farmers are investing. (In The Indian Express, Ashok Gulati suggests the enhanced compensation will cover roughly less than 50 per cent of the per hectare costs incurred by wheat farmers. Separately, we found it will not compensate cotton farmers more than 10 per cent of their expenses.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As a medium-term buffer against crop damage (which climate change threatens to make a regular feature), the prime minister may want to consider Gulati&#039;s suggestion for the government to significantly underwrite crop insurance. The current arrangement requires the farmer to pay a very high component of the premium, one of the factors why only a small fraction of agriculturists (5 per cent) have opted for insurance cover. To head off any potential rumblings from this governments &#039;suited-booted&#039; support base, Narendra Modi only needs to invoke the US, which, as Gulati points out, underwrites 70 per cent of crop insurance premium.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As for the falling commodity prices, this may have been the time, among other steps, to implement Modi&#039;s election-time promise of using the Swaminathan Commission formula to fix minimum support prices or MSP. (The commission suggested MSP should be at least 50 per cent of the farmers cost of production.) But the promise of generous price support has been dumped without suitable explanation. Instead, the government seems now enamoured of the Shanta Kumar committee report, which asks for the scaling down of the public distribution system (PDS). At any other time, a debate on revisiting food subsidies may be well in order, but someone needs to tell the government that now is perhaps not the best time to send out signals - overt and tacit - that will slow down the pace of procurement.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Perhaps, that someone, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, could be chief ministers, even of Bharatiya Janata Party-run states. Raman Singh, for instance, whose successful turnaround of Chhattisgarh&#039;s PDS network is based on the very same ingredients - like near-universal coverage - that the Shanta Kumar report seeks to scrap. Or Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for instance, who is among a group of chief ministers that has written to the Centre expressing concern at the acute slowdown in NREGA disbursals, delays that have hit an all-time high in the past eight months.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In all fairness, there was an attempt, in the hysteria of the past week, to use facts instead of hyperbole to corner the government for its somewhat disingenuous concern for the Indian farmer. Except the intervention came from the itinerant vice-president of the Congress, a party whose track record, contrary to Rahul Gandhi&#039;s exertions, belies its self-description as the Chief Saviour of Indian Peasantry. Yes, the Congress ordered a one-time exponential raise in MSP. Except it was in 2008. Seven years ago. Taking a longer view, since the nineties, the Grand Old Party has presided over a decline in virtually all the myriad support systems required to keep agriculture afloat: rural credit, public investment in agriculture, insurance cover and so on.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
None of this would be news to the political establishment; the gradual chipping away at the edifice of the rural economy predicates some sort of knowledge of that structure. But it is more convenient for everyone to debate the troubles of Indian agriculture as if it were some kind of karmic malaise, and not the outcome of flawed decision-making.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;Business Standard, 27 April, 2015, http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/sreenivasan-jain-kissa-kisan-ka-evading-blame-for-rural-distress-115042700978_1.html&#039;,
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-Business Standard

Events after a farmer&#039;s suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture

The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a...&#039;
$disp = &#039;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;-Business Standard&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;Events after a farmer&#039;s suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a young man from Rajasthan at an Aam Aadmi Party rally in New Delhi, perfectly encapsulates the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture today. The discovery that his may not have been a textbook case of suicide caused by rural distress barely interrupted the three-ring circus that ensued.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A shallow pool of cliche and false assumptions suits everyone - a commentariat that has made no serious investment in understanding the complex tensions that drive India&#039;s agricultural economy, and a political class that uses this analytical vacuum to evade responsibility for rural distress.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Take the prime minister&#039;s stirring call, asking political parties to unite to find a solution. On the face of it, the immediate reasons driving the current crisis - one, crop damage and two, falling commodity prices - hardly require booking Vigyan Bhawan for a three-day confabulation. The first can be addressed by significantly raising the compensation amount for crop damage, which, even after the much-ballyhooed 50 per cent increase over the previous slab, falls pitifully short of what farmers are investing. (In The Indian Express, Ashok Gulati suggests the enhanced compensation will cover roughly less than 50 per cent of the per hectare costs incurred by wheat farmers. Separately, we found it will not compensate cotton farmers more than 10 per cent of their expenses.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As a medium-term buffer against crop damage (which climate change threatens to make a regular feature), the prime minister may want to consider Gulati&#039;s suggestion for the government to significantly underwrite crop insurance. The current arrangement requires the farmer to pay a very high component of the premium, one of the factors why only a small fraction of agriculturists (5 per cent) have opted for insurance cover. To head off any potential rumblings from this governments &#039;suited-booted&#039; support base, Narendra Modi only needs to invoke the US, which, as Gulati points out, underwrites 70 per cent of crop insurance premium.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As for the falling commodity prices, this may have been the time, among other steps, to implement Modi&#039;s election-time promise of using the Swaminathan Commission formula to fix minimum support prices or MSP. (The commission suggested MSP should be at least 50 per cent of the farmers cost of production.) But the promise of generous price support has been dumped without suitable explanation. Instead, the government seems now enamoured of the Shanta Kumar committee report, which asks for the scaling down of the public distribution system (PDS). At any other time, a debate on revisiting food subsidies may be well in order, but someone needs to tell the government that now is perhaps not the best time to send out signals - overt and tacit - that will slow down the pace of procurement.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Perhaps, that someone, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, could be chief ministers, even of Bharatiya Janata Party-run states. Raman Singh, for instance, whose successful turnaround of Chhattisgarh&#039;s PDS network is based on the very same ingredients - like near-universal coverage - that the Shanta Kumar report seeks to scrap. Or Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for instance, who is among a group of chief ministers that has written to the Centre expressing concern at the acute slowdown in NREGA disbursals, delays that have hit an all-time high in the past eight months.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In all fairness, there was an attempt, in the hysteria of the past week, to use facts instead of hyperbole to corner the government for its somewhat disingenuous concern for the Indian farmer. Except the intervention came from the itinerant vice-president of the Congress, a party whose track record, contrary to Rahul Gandhi&#039;s exertions, belies its self-description as the Chief Saviour of Indian Peasantry. Yes, the Congress ordered a one-time exponential raise in MSP. Except it was in 2008. Seven years ago. Taking a longer view, since the nineties, the Grand Old Party has presided over a decline in virtually all the myriad support systems required to keep agriculture afloat: rural credit, public investment in agriculture, insurance cover and so on.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;None of this would be news to the political establishment; the gradual chipping away at the edifice of the rural economy predicates some sort of knowledge of that structure. But it is more convenient for everyone to debate the troubles of Indian agriculture as if it were some kind of karmic malaise, and not the outcome of flawed decision-making.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
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-Business Standard

Events after a farmer's suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture

The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a..."/>
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                <strong>Kissa kisan ka - Evading blame for rural distress -Sreenivasan Jain</strong></h1>
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                <div align="justify">-Business Standard<br /><br /><em>Events after a farmer's suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture<br /></em><br />The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a young man from Rajasthan at an Aam Aadmi Party rally in New Delhi, perfectly encapsulates the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture today. The discovery that his may not have been a textbook case of suicide caused by rural distress barely interrupted the three-ring circus that ensued.<br /><br />A shallow pool of cliche and false assumptions suits everyone - a commentariat that has made no serious investment in understanding the complex tensions that drive India's agricultural economy, and a political class that uses this analytical vacuum to evade responsibility for rural distress.<br /><br />Take the prime minister's stirring call, asking political parties to unite to find a solution. On the face of it, the immediate reasons driving the current crisis - one, crop damage and two, falling commodity prices - hardly require booking Vigyan Bhawan for a three-day confabulation. The first can be addressed by significantly raising the compensation amount for crop damage, which, even after the much-ballyhooed 50 per cent increase over the previous slab, falls pitifully short of what farmers are investing. (In The Indian Express, Ashok Gulati suggests the enhanced compensation will cover roughly less than 50 per cent of the per hectare costs incurred by wheat farmers. Separately, we found it will not compensate cotton farmers more than 10 per cent of their expenses.)<br /><br />As a medium-term buffer against crop damage (which climate change threatens to make a regular feature), the prime minister may want to consider Gulati's suggestion for the government to significantly underwrite crop insurance. The current arrangement requires the farmer to pay a very high component of the premium, one of the factors why only a small fraction of agriculturists (5 per cent) have opted for insurance cover. To head off any potential rumblings from this governments 'suited-booted' support base, Narendra Modi only needs to invoke the US, which, as Gulati points out, underwrites 70 per cent of crop insurance premium.<br /><br />As for the falling commodity prices, this may have been the time, among other steps, to implement Modi's election-time promise of using the Swaminathan Commission formula to fix minimum support prices or MSP. (The commission suggested MSP should be at least 50 per cent of the farmers cost of production.) But the promise of generous price support has been dumped without suitable explanation. Instead, the government seems now enamoured of the Shanta Kumar committee report, which asks for the scaling down of the public distribution system (PDS). At any other time, a debate on revisiting food subsidies may be well in order, but someone needs to tell the government that now is perhaps not the best time to send out signals - overt and tacit - that will slow down the pace of procurement.<br /><br />Perhaps, that someone, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, could be chief ministers, even of Bharatiya Janata Party-run states. Raman Singh, for instance, whose successful turnaround of Chhattisgarh's PDS network is based on the very same ingredients - like near-universal coverage - that the Shanta Kumar report seeks to scrap. Or Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for instance, who is among a group of chief ministers that has written to the Centre expressing concern at the acute slowdown in NREGA disbursals, delays that have hit an all-time high in the past eight months.<br /><br />In all fairness, there was an attempt, in the hysteria of the past week, to use facts instead of hyperbole to corner the government for its somewhat disingenuous concern for the Indian farmer. Except the intervention came from the itinerant vice-president of the Congress, a party whose track record, contrary to Rahul Gandhi's exertions, belies its self-description as the Chief Saviour of Indian Peasantry. Yes, the Congress ordered a one-time exponential raise in MSP. Except it was in 2008. Seven years ago. Taking a longer view, since the nineties, the Grand Old Party has presided over a decline in virtually all the myriad support systems required to keep agriculture afloat: rural credit, public investment in agriculture, insurance cover and so on.<br /><br />None of this would be news to the political establishment; the gradual chipping away at the edifice of the rural economy predicates some sort of knowledge of that structure. But it is more convenient for everyone to debate the troubles of Indian agriculture as if it were some kind of karmic malaise, and not the outcome of flawed decision-making.<br /><br /><em>The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7</em></div>               </font>
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-Business Standard&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Events after a farmer&#039;s suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a young man from Rajasthan at an Aam Aadmi Party rally in New Delhi, perfectly encapsulates the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture today. The discovery that his may not have been a textbook case of suicide caused by rural distress barely interrupted the three-ring circus that ensued.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A shallow pool of cliche and false assumptions suits everyone - a commentariat that has made no serious investment in understanding the complex tensions that drive India&#039;s agricultural economy, and a political class that uses this analytical vacuum to evade responsibility for rural distress.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Take the prime minister&#039;s stirring call, asking political parties to unite to find a solution. On the face of it, the immediate reasons driving the current crisis - one, crop damage and two, falling commodity prices - hardly require booking Vigyan Bhawan for a three-day confabulation. The first can be addressed by significantly raising the compensation amount for crop damage, which, even after the much-ballyhooed 50 per cent increase over the previous slab, falls pitifully short of what farmers are investing. (In The Indian Express, Ashok Gulati suggests the enhanced compensation will cover roughly less than 50 per cent of the per hectare costs incurred by wheat farmers. Separately, we found it will not compensate cotton farmers more than 10 per cent of their expenses.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As a medium-term buffer against crop damage (which climate change threatens to make a regular feature), the prime minister may want to consider Gulati&#039;s suggestion for the government to significantly underwrite crop insurance. The current arrangement requires the farmer to pay a very high component of the premium, one of the factors why only a small fraction of agriculturists (5 per cent) have opted for insurance cover. To head off any potential rumblings from this governments &#039;suited-booted&#039; support base, Narendra Modi only needs to invoke the US, which, as Gulati points out, underwrites 70 per cent of crop insurance premium.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As for the falling commodity prices, this may have been the time, among other steps, to implement Modi&#039;s election-time promise of using the Swaminathan Commission formula to fix minimum support prices or MSP. (The commission suggested MSP should be at least 50 per cent of the farmers cost of production.) But the promise of generous price support has been dumped without suitable explanation. Instead, the government seems now enamoured of the Shanta Kumar committee report, which asks for the scaling down of the public distribution system (PDS). At any other time, a debate on revisiting food subsidies may be well in order, but someone needs to tell the government that now is perhaps not the best time to send out signals - overt and tacit - that will slow down the pace of procurement.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Perhaps, that someone, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, could be chief ministers, even of Bharatiya Janata Party-run states. Raman Singh, for instance, whose successful turnaround of Chhattisgarh&#039;s PDS network is based on the very same ingredients - like near-universal coverage - that the Shanta Kumar report seeks to scrap. Or Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for instance, who is among a group of chief ministers that has written to the Centre expressing concern at the acute slowdown in NREGA disbursals, delays that have hit an all-time high in the past eight months.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In all fairness, there was an attempt, in the hysteria of the past week, to use facts instead of hyperbole to corner the government for its somewhat disingenuous concern for the Indian farmer. Except the intervention came from the itinerant vice-president of the Congress, a party whose track record, contrary to Rahul Gandhi&#039;s exertions, belies its self-description as the Chief Saviour of Indian Peasantry. Yes, the Congress ordered a one-time exponential raise in MSP. Except it was in 2008. Seven years ago. Taking a longer view, since the nineties, the Grand Old Party has presided over a decline in virtually all the myriad support systems required to keep agriculture afloat: rural credit, public investment in agriculture, insurance cover and so on.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
None of this would be news to the political establishment; the gradual chipping away at the edifice of the rural economy predicates some sort of knowledge of that structure. But it is more convenient for everyone to debate the troubles of Indian agriculture as if it were some kind of karmic malaise, and not the outcome of flawed decision-making.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
		&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;Business Standard, 27 April, 2015, http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/sreenivasan-jain-kissa-kisan-ka-evading-blame-for-rural-distress-115042700978_1.html&#039;,
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-Business Standard

Events after a farmer&#039;s suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture

The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;-Business Standard&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;Events after a farmer&#039;s suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a young man from Rajasthan at an Aam Aadmi Party rally in New Delhi, perfectly encapsulates the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture today. The discovery that his may not have been a textbook case of suicide caused by rural distress barely interrupted the three-ring circus that ensued.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A shallow pool of cliche and false assumptions suits everyone - a commentariat that has made no serious investment in understanding the complex tensions that drive India&#039;s agricultural economy, and a political class that uses this analytical vacuum to evade responsibility for rural distress.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Take the prime minister&#039;s stirring call, asking political parties to unite to find a solution. On the face of it, the immediate reasons driving the current crisis - one, crop damage and two, falling commodity prices - hardly require booking Vigyan Bhawan for a three-day confabulation. The first can be addressed by significantly raising the compensation amount for crop damage, which, even after the much-ballyhooed 50 per cent increase over the previous slab, falls pitifully short of what farmers are investing. (In The Indian Express, Ashok Gulati suggests the enhanced compensation will cover roughly less than 50 per cent of the per hectare costs incurred by wheat farmers. Separately, we found it will not compensate cotton farmers more than 10 per cent of their expenses.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As a medium-term buffer against crop damage (which climate change threatens to make a regular feature), the prime minister may want to consider Gulati&#039;s suggestion for the government to significantly underwrite crop insurance. The current arrangement requires the farmer to pay a very high component of the premium, one of the factors why only a small fraction of agriculturists (5 per cent) have opted for insurance cover. To head off any potential rumblings from this governments &#039;suited-booted&#039; support base, Narendra Modi only needs to invoke the US, which, as Gulati points out, underwrites 70 per cent of crop insurance premium.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As for the falling commodity prices, this may have been the time, among other steps, to implement Modi&#039;s election-time promise of using the Swaminathan Commission formula to fix minimum support prices or MSP. (The commission suggested MSP should be at least 50 per cent of the farmers cost of production.) But the promise of generous price support has been dumped without suitable explanation. Instead, the government seems now enamoured of the Shanta Kumar committee report, which asks for the scaling down of the public distribution system (PDS). At any other time, a debate on revisiting food subsidies may be well in order, but someone needs to tell the government that now is perhaps not the best time to send out signals - overt and tacit - that will slow down the pace of procurement.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Perhaps, that someone, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, could be chief ministers, even of Bharatiya Janata Party-run states. Raman Singh, for instance, whose successful turnaround of Chhattisgarh&#039;s PDS network is based on the very same ingredients - like near-universal coverage - that the Shanta Kumar report seeks to scrap. Or Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for instance, who is among a group of chief ministers that has written to the Centre expressing concern at the acute slowdown in NREGA disbursals, delays that have hit an all-time high in the past eight months.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In all fairness, there was an attempt, in the hysteria of the past week, to use facts instead of hyperbole to corner the government for its somewhat disingenuous concern for the Indian farmer. Except the intervention came from the itinerant vice-president of the Congress, a party whose track record, contrary to Rahul Gandhi&#039;s exertions, belies its self-description as the Chief Saviour of Indian Peasantry. Yes, the Congress ordered a one-time exponential raise in MSP. Except it was in 2008. Seven years ago. Taking a longer view, since the nineties, the Grand Old Party has presided over a decline in virtually all the myriad support systems required to keep agriculture afloat: rural credit, public investment in agriculture, insurance cover and so on.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;None of this would be news to the political establishment; the gradual chipping away at the edifice of the rural economy predicates some sort of knowledge of that structure. But it is more convenient for everyone to debate the troubles of Indian agriculture as if it were some kind of karmic malaise, and not the outcome of flawed decision-making.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
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-Business Standard&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Events after a farmer&#039;s suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a young man from Rajasthan at an Aam Aadmi Party rally in New Delhi, perfectly encapsulates the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture today. The discovery that his may not have been a textbook case of suicide caused by rural distress barely interrupted the three-ring circus that ensued.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
A shallow pool of cliche and false assumptions suits everyone - a commentariat that has made no serious investment in understanding the complex tensions that drive India&#039;s agricultural economy, and a political class that uses this analytical vacuum to evade responsibility for rural distress.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Take the prime minister&#039;s stirring call, asking political parties to unite to find a solution. On the face of it, the immediate reasons driving the current crisis - one, crop damage and two, falling commodity prices - hardly require booking Vigyan Bhawan for a three-day confabulation. The first can be addressed by significantly raising the compensation amount for crop damage, which, even after the much-ballyhooed 50 per cent increase over the previous slab, falls pitifully short of what farmers are investing. (In The Indian Express, Ashok Gulati suggests the enhanced compensation will cover roughly less than 50 per cent of the per hectare costs incurred by wheat farmers. Separately, we found it will not compensate cotton farmers more than 10 per cent of their expenses.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As a medium-term buffer against crop damage (which climate change threatens to make a regular feature), the prime minister may want to consider Gulati&#039;s suggestion for the government to significantly underwrite crop insurance. The current arrangement requires the farmer to pay a very high component of the premium, one of the factors why only a small fraction of agriculturists (5 per cent) have opted for insurance cover. To head off any potential rumblings from this governments &#039;suited-booted&#039; support base, Narendra Modi only needs to invoke the US, which, as Gulati points out, underwrites 70 per cent of crop insurance premium.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As for the falling commodity prices, this may have been the time, among other steps, to implement Modi&#039;s election-time promise of using the Swaminathan Commission formula to fix minimum support prices or MSP. (The commission suggested MSP should be at least 50 per cent of the farmers cost of production.) But the promise of generous price support has been dumped without suitable explanation. Instead, the government seems now enamoured of the Shanta Kumar committee report, which asks for the scaling down of the public distribution system (PDS). At any other time, a debate on revisiting food subsidies may be well in order, but someone needs to tell the government that now is perhaps not the best time to send out signals - overt and tacit - that will slow down the pace of procurement.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Perhaps, that someone, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, could be chief ministers, even of Bharatiya Janata Party-run states. Raman Singh, for instance, whose successful turnaround of Chhattisgarh&#039;s PDS network is based on the very same ingredients - like near-universal coverage - that the Shanta Kumar report seeks to scrap. Or Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for instance, who is among a group of chief ministers that has written to the Centre expressing concern at the acute slowdown in NREGA disbursals, delays that have hit an all-time high in the past eight months.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In all fairness, there was an attempt, in the hysteria of the past week, to use facts instead of hyperbole to corner the government for its somewhat disingenuous concern for the Indian farmer. Except the intervention came from the itinerant vice-president of the Congress, a party whose track record, contrary to Rahul Gandhi&#039;s exertions, belies its self-description as the Chief Saviour of Indian Peasantry. Yes, the Congress ordered a one-time exponential raise in MSP. Except it was in 2008. Seven years ago. Taking a longer view, since the nineties, the Grand Old Party has presided over a decline in virtually all the myriad support systems required to keep agriculture afloat: rural credit, public investment in agriculture, insurance cover and so on.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
None of this would be news to the political establishment; the gradual chipping away at the edifice of the rural economy predicates some sort of knowledge of that structure. But it is more convenient for everyone to debate the troubles of Indian agriculture as if it were some kind of karmic malaise, and not the outcome of flawed decision-making.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;Business Standard, 27 April, 2015, http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/sreenivasan-jain-kissa-kisan-ka-evading-blame-for-rural-distress-115042700978_1.html&#039;,
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-Business Standard

Events after a farmer&#039;s suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture

The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a...&#039;
$disp = &#039;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;-Business Standard&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;Events after a farmer&#039;s suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a young man from Rajasthan at an Aam Aadmi Party rally in New Delhi, perfectly encapsulates the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture today. The discovery that his may not have been a textbook case of suicide caused by rural distress barely interrupted the three-ring circus that ensued.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A shallow pool of cliche and false assumptions suits everyone - a commentariat that has made no serious investment in understanding the complex tensions that drive India&#039;s agricultural economy, and a political class that uses this analytical vacuum to evade responsibility for rural distress.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Take the prime minister&#039;s stirring call, asking political parties to unite to find a solution. On the face of it, the immediate reasons driving the current crisis - one, crop damage and two, falling commodity prices - hardly require booking Vigyan Bhawan for a three-day confabulation. The first can be addressed by significantly raising the compensation amount for crop damage, which, even after the much-ballyhooed 50 per cent increase over the previous slab, falls pitifully short of what farmers are investing. (In The Indian Express, Ashok Gulati suggests the enhanced compensation will cover roughly less than 50 per cent of the per hectare costs incurred by wheat farmers. Separately, we found it will not compensate cotton farmers more than 10 per cent of their expenses.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As a medium-term buffer against crop damage (which climate change threatens to make a regular feature), the prime minister may want to consider Gulati&#039;s suggestion for the government to significantly underwrite crop insurance. The current arrangement requires the farmer to pay a very high component of the premium, one of the factors why only a small fraction of agriculturists (5 per cent) have opted for insurance cover. To head off any potential rumblings from this governments &#039;suited-booted&#039; support base, Narendra Modi only needs to invoke the US, which, as Gulati points out, underwrites 70 per cent of crop insurance premium.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As for the falling commodity prices, this may have been the time, among other steps, to implement Modi&#039;s election-time promise of using the Swaminathan Commission formula to fix minimum support prices or MSP. (The commission suggested MSP should be at least 50 per cent of the farmers cost of production.) But the promise of generous price support has been dumped without suitable explanation. Instead, the government seems now enamoured of the Shanta Kumar committee report, which asks for the scaling down of the public distribution system (PDS). At any other time, a debate on revisiting food subsidies may be well in order, but someone needs to tell the government that now is perhaps not the best time to send out signals - overt and tacit - that will slow down the pace of procurement.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Perhaps, that someone, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, could be chief ministers, even of Bharatiya Janata Party-run states. Raman Singh, for instance, whose successful turnaround of Chhattisgarh&#039;s PDS network is based on the very same ingredients - like near-universal coverage - that the Shanta Kumar report seeks to scrap. Or Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for instance, who is among a group of chief ministers that has written to the Centre expressing concern at the acute slowdown in NREGA disbursals, delays that have hit an all-time high in the past eight months.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In all fairness, there was an attempt, in the hysteria of the past week, to use facts instead of hyperbole to corner the government for its somewhat disingenuous concern for the Indian farmer. Except the intervention came from the itinerant vice-president of the Congress, a party whose track record, contrary to Rahul Gandhi&#039;s exertions, belies its self-description as the Chief Saviour of Indian Peasantry. Yes, the Congress ordered a one-time exponential raise in MSP. Except it was in 2008. Seven years ago. Taking a longer view, since the nineties, the Grand Old Party has presided over a decline in virtually all the myriad support systems required to keep agriculture afloat: rural credit, public investment in agriculture, insurance cover and so on.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;None of this would be news to the political establishment; the gradual chipping away at the edifice of the rural economy predicates some sort of knowledge of that structure. But it is more convenient for everyone to debate the troubles of Indian agriculture as if it were some kind of karmic malaise, and not the outcome of flawed decision-making.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
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Events after a farmer's suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture

The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a..."/>
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                <div align="justify">-Business Standard<br /><br /><em>Events after a farmer's suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture<br /></em><br />The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a young man from Rajasthan at an Aam Aadmi Party rally in New Delhi, perfectly encapsulates the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture today. The discovery that his may not have been a textbook case of suicide caused by rural distress barely interrupted the three-ring circus that ensued.<br /><br />A shallow pool of cliche and false assumptions suits everyone - a commentariat that has made no serious investment in understanding the complex tensions that drive India's agricultural economy, and a political class that uses this analytical vacuum to evade responsibility for rural distress.<br /><br />Take the prime minister's stirring call, asking political parties to unite to find a solution. On the face of it, the immediate reasons driving the current crisis - one, crop damage and two, falling commodity prices - hardly require booking Vigyan Bhawan for a three-day confabulation. The first can be addressed by significantly raising the compensation amount for crop damage, which, even after the much-ballyhooed 50 per cent increase over the previous slab, falls pitifully short of what farmers are investing. (In The Indian Express, Ashok Gulati suggests the enhanced compensation will cover roughly less than 50 per cent of the per hectare costs incurred by wheat farmers. Separately, we found it will not compensate cotton farmers more than 10 per cent of their expenses.)<br /><br />As a medium-term buffer against crop damage (which climate change threatens to make a regular feature), the prime minister may want to consider Gulati's suggestion for the government to significantly underwrite crop insurance. The current arrangement requires the farmer to pay a very high component of the premium, one of the factors why only a small fraction of agriculturists (5 per cent) have opted for insurance cover. To head off any potential rumblings from this governments 'suited-booted' support base, Narendra Modi only needs to invoke the US, which, as Gulati points out, underwrites 70 per cent of crop insurance premium.<br /><br />As for the falling commodity prices, this may have been the time, among other steps, to implement Modi's election-time promise of using the Swaminathan Commission formula to fix minimum support prices or MSP. (The commission suggested MSP should be at least 50 per cent of the farmers cost of production.) But the promise of generous price support has been dumped without suitable explanation. Instead, the government seems now enamoured of the Shanta Kumar committee report, which asks for the scaling down of the public distribution system (PDS). At any other time, a debate on revisiting food subsidies may be well in order, but someone needs to tell the government that now is perhaps not the best time to send out signals - overt and tacit - that will slow down the pace of procurement.<br /><br />Perhaps, that someone, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, could be chief ministers, even of Bharatiya Janata Party-run states. Raman Singh, for instance, whose successful turnaround of Chhattisgarh's PDS network is based on the very same ingredients - like near-universal coverage - that the Shanta Kumar report seeks to scrap. Or Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for instance, who is among a group of chief ministers that has written to the Centre expressing concern at the acute slowdown in NREGA disbursals, delays that have hit an all-time high in the past eight months.<br /><br />In all fairness, there was an attempt, in the hysteria of the past week, to use facts instead of hyperbole to corner the government for its somewhat disingenuous concern for the Indian farmer. Except the intervention came from the itinerant vice-president of the Congress, a party whose track record, contrary to Rahul Gandhi's exertions, belies its self-description as the Chief Saviour of Indian Peasantry. Yes, the Congress ordered a one-time exponential raise in MSP. Except it was in 2008. Seven years ago. Taking a longer view, since the nineties, the Grand Old Party has presided over a decline in virtually all the myriad support systems required to keep agriculture afloat: rural credit, public investment in agriculture, insurance cover and so on.<br /><br />None of this would be news to the political establishment; the gradual chipping away at the edifice of the rural economy predicates some sort of knowledge of that structure. But it is more convenient for everyone to debate the troubles of Indian agriculture as if it were some kind of karmic malaise, and not the outcome of flawed decision-making.<br /><br /><em>The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7</em></div>               </font>
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-Business Standard<br />
<br />
<em>Events after a farmer's suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture<br />
</em><br />
The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a young man from Rajasthan at an Aam Aadmi Party rally in New Delhi, perfectly encapsulates the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture today. The discovery that his may not have been a textbook case of suicide caused by rural distress barely interrupted the three-ring circus that ensued.<br />
<br />
A shallow pool of cliche and false assumptions suits everyone - a commentariat that has made no serious investment in understanding the complex tensions that drive India's agricultural economy, and a political class that uses this analytical vacuum to evade responsibility for rural distress.<br />
<br />
Take the prime minister's stirring call, asking political parties to unite to find a solution. On the face of it, the immediate reasons driving the current crisis - one, crop damage and two, falling commodity prices - hardly require booking Vigyan Bhawan for a three-day confabulation. The first can be addressed by significantly raising the compensation amount for crop damage, which, even after the much-ballyhooed 50 per cent increase over the previous slab, falls pitifully short of what farmers are investing. (In The Indian Express, Ashok Gulati suggests the enhanced compensation will cover roughly less than 50 per cent of the per hectare costs incurred by wheat farmers. Separately, we found it will not compensate cotton farmers more than 10 per cent of their expenses.)<br />
<br />
As a medium-term buffer against crop damage (which climate change threatens to make a regular feature), the prime minister may want to consider Gulati's suggestion for the government to significantly underwrite crop insurance. The current arrangement requires the farmer to pay a very high component of the premium, one of the factors why only a small fraction of agriculturists (5 per cent) have opted for insurance cover. To head off any potential rumblings from this governments 'suited-booted' support base, Narendra Modi only needs to invoke the US, which, as Gulati points out, underwrites 70 per cent of crop insurance premium.<br />
<br />
As for the falling commodity prices, this may have been the time, among other steps, to implement Modi's election-time promise of using the Swaminathan Commission formula to fix minimum support prices or MSP. (The commission suggested MSP should be at least 50 per cent of the farmers cost of production.) But the promise of generous price support has been dumped without suitable explanation. Instead, the government seems now enamoured of the Shanta Kumar committee report, which asks for the scaling down of the public distribution system (PDS). At any other time, a debate on revisiting food subsidies may be well in order, but someone needs to tell the government that now is perhaps not the best time to send out signals - overt and tacit - that will slow down the pace of procurement.<br />
<br />
Perhaps, that someone, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, could be chief ministers, even of Bharatiya Janata Party-run states. Raman Singh, for instance, whose successful turnaround of Chhattisgarh's PDS network is based on the very same ingredients - like near-universal coverage - that the Shanta Kumar report seeks to scrap. Or Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for instance, who is among a group of chief ministers that has written to the Centre expressing concern at the acute slowdown in NREGA disbursals, delays that have hit an all-time high in the past eight months.<br />
<br />
In all fairness, there was an attempt, in the hysteria of the past week, to use facts instead of hyperbole to corner the government for its somewhat disingenuous concern for the Indian farmer. Except the intervention came from the itinerant vice-president of the Congress, a party whose track record, contrary to Rahul Gandhi's exertions, belies its self-description as the Chief Saviour of Indian Peasantry. Yes, the Congress ordered a one-time exponential raise in MSP. Except it was in 2008. Seven years ago. Taking a longer view, since the nineties, the Grand Old Party has presided over a decline in virtually all the myriad support systems required to keep agriculture afloat: rural credit, public investment in agriculture, insurance cover and so on.<br />
<br />
None of this would be news to the political establishment; the gradual chipping away at the edifice of the rural economy predicates some sort of knowledge of that structure. But it is more convenient for everyone to debate the troubles of Indian agriculture as if it were some kind of karmic malaise, and not the outcome of flawed decision-making.<br />
<br />
<em>The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7</em>
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-Business Standard

Events after a farmer's suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture

The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a...',
	'disp' => '<div align="justify">-Business Standard<br /><br /><em>Events after a farmer's suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture<br /></em><br />The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a young man from Rajasthan at an Aam Aadmi Party rally in New Delhi, perfectly encapsulates the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture today. The discovery that his may not have been a textbook case of suicide caused by rural distress barely interrupted the three-ring circus that ensued.<br /><br />A shallow pool of cliche and false assumptions suits everyone - a commentariat that has made no serious investment in understanding the complex tensions that drive India's agricultural economy, and a political class that uses this analytical vacuum to evade responsibility for rural distress.<br /><br />Take the prime minister's stirring call, asking political parties to unite to find a solution. On the face of it, the immediate reasons driving the current crisis - one, crop damage and two, falling commodity prices - hardly require booking Vigyan Bhawan for a three-day confabulation. The first can be addressed by significantly raising the compensation amount for crop damage, which, even after the much-ballyhooed 50 per cent increase over the previous slab, falls pitifully short of what farmers are investing. (In The Indian Express, Ashok Gulati suggests the enhanced compensation will cover roughly less than 50 per cent of the per hectare costs incurred by wheat farmers. Separately, we found it will not compensate cotton farmers more than 10 per cent of their expenses.)<br /><br />As a medium-term buffer against crop damage (which climate change threatens to make a regular feature), the prime minister may want to consider Gulati's suggestion for the government to significantly underwrite crop insurance. The current arrangement requires the farmer to pay a very high component of the premium, one of the factors why only a small fraction of agriculturists (5 per cent) have opted for insurance cover. To head off any potential rumblings from this governments 'suited-booted' support base, Narendra Modi only needs to invoke the US, which, as Gulati points out, underwrites 70 per cent of crop insurance premium.<br /><br />As for the falling commodity prices, this may have been the time, among other steps, to implement Modi's election-time promise of using the Swaminathan Commission formula to fix minimum support prices or MSP. (The commission suggested MSP should be at least 50 per cent of the farmers cost of production.) But the promise of generous price support has been dumped without suitable explanation. Instead, the government seems now enamoured of the Shanta Kumar committee report, which asks for the scaling down of the public distribution system (PDS). At any other time, a debate on revisiting food subsidies may be well in order, but someone needs to tell the government that now is perhaps not the best time to send out signals - overt and tacit - that will slow down the pace of procurement.<br /><br />Perhaps, that someone, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, could be chief ministers, even of Bharatiya Janata Party-run states. Raman Singh, for instance, whose successful turnaround of Chhattisgarh's PDS network is based on the very same ingredients - like near-universal coverage - that the Shanta Kumar report seeks to scrap. Or Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for instance, who is among a group of chief ministers that has written to the Centre expressing concern at the acute slowdown in NREGA disbursals, delays that have hit an all-time high in the past eight months.<br /><br />In all fairness, there was an attempt, in the hysteria of the past week, to use facts instead of hyperbole to corner the government for its somewhat disingenuous concern for the Indian farmer. Except the intervention came from the itinerant vice-president of the Congress, a party whose track record, contrary to Rahul Gandhi's exertions, belies its self-description as the Chief Saviour of Indian Peasantry. Yes, the Congress ordered a one-time exponential raise in MSP. Except it was in 2008. Seven years ago. Taking a longer view, since the nineties, the Grand Old Party has presided over a decline in virtually all the myriad support systems required to keep agriculture afloat: rural credit, public investment in agriculture, insurance cover and so on.<br /><br />None of this would be news to the political establishment; the gradual chipping away at the edifice of the rural economy predicates some sort of knowledge of that structure. But it is more convenient for everyone to debate the troubles of Indian agriculture as if it were some kind of karmic malaise, and not the outcome of flawed decision-making.<br /><br /><em>The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7</em></div>',
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-Business Standard<br />
<br />
<em>Events after a farmer's suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture<br />
</em><br />
The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a young man from Rajasthan at an Aam Aadmi Party rally in New Delhi, perfectly encapsulates the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture today. The discovery that his may not have been a textbook case of suicide caused by rural distress barely interrupted the three-ring circus that ensued.<br />
<br />
A shallow pool of cliche and false assumptions suits everyone - a commentariat that has made no serious investment in understanding the complex tensions that drive India's agricultural economy, and a political class that uses this analytical vacuum to evade responsibility for rural distress.<br />
<br />
Take the prime minister's stirring call, asking political parties to unite to find a solution. On the face of it, the immediate reasons driving the current crisis - one, crop damage and two, falling commodity prices - hardly require booking Vigyan Bhawan for a three-day confabulation. The first can be addressed by significantly raising the compensation amount for crop damage, which, even after the much-ballyhooed 50 per cent increase over the previous slab, falls pitifully short of what farmers are investing. (In The Indian Express, Ashok Gulati suggests the enhanced compensation will cover roughly less than 50 per cent of the per hectare costs incurred by wheat farmers. Separately, we found it will not compensate cotton farmers more than 10 per cent of their expenses.)<br />
<br />
As a medium-term buffer against crop damage (which climate change threatens to make a regular feature), the prime minister may want to consider Gulati's suggestion for the government to significantly underwrite crop insurance. The current arrangement requires the farmer to pay a very high component of the premium, one of the factors why only a small fraction of agriculturists (5 per cent) have opted for insurance cover. To head off any potential rumblings from this governments 'suited-booted' support base, Narendra Modi only needs to invoke the US, which, as Gulati points out, underwrites 70 per cent of crop insurance premium.<br />
<br />
As for the falling commodity prices, this may have been the time, among other steps, to implement Modi's election-time promise of using the Swaminathan Commission formula to fix minimum support prices or MSP. (The commission suggested MSP should be at least 50 per cent of the farmers cost of production.) But the promise of generous price support has been dumped without suitable explanation. Instead, the government seems now enamoured of the Shanta Kumar committee report, which asks for the scaling down of the public distribution system (PDS). At any other time, a debate on revisiting food subsidies may be well in order, but someone needs to tell the government that now is perhaps not the best time to send out signals - overt and tacit - that will slow down the pace of procurement.<br />
<br />
Perhaps, that someone, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, could be chief ministers, even of Bharatiya Janata Party-run states. Raman Singh, for instance, whose successful turnaround of Chhattisgarh's PDS network is based on the very same ingredients - like near-universal coverage - that the Shanta Kumar report seeks to scrap. Or Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for instance, who is among a group of chief ministers that has written to the Centre expressing concern at the acute slowdown in NREGA disbursals, delays that have hit an all-time high in the past eight months.<br />
<br />
In all fairness, there was an attempt, in the hysteria of the past week, to use facts instead of hyperbole to corner the government for its somewhat disingenuous concern for the Indian farmer. Except the intervention came from the itinerant vice-president of the Congress, a party whose track record, contrary to Rahul Gandhi's exertions, belies its self-description as the Chief Saviour of Indian Peasantry. Yes, the Congress ordered a one-time exponential raise in MSP. Except it was in 2008. Seven years ago. Taking a longer view, since the nineties, the Grand Old Party has presided over a decline in virtually all the myriad support systems required to keep agriculture afloat: rural credit, public investment in agriculture, insurance cover and so on.<br />
<br />
None of this would be news to the political establishment; the gradual chipping away at the edifice of the rural economy predicates some sort of knowledge of that structure. But it is more convenient for everyone to debate the troubles of Indian agriculture as if it were some kind of karmic malaise, and not the outcome of flawed decision-making.<br />
<br />
<em>The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7</em>
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-Business Standard

Events after a farmer's suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture

The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a...'
$disp = '<div align="justify">-Business Standard<br /><br /><em>Events after a farmer's suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture<br /></em><br />The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a young man from Rajasthan at an Aam Aadmi Party rally in New Delhi, perfectly encapsulates the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture today. The discovery that his may not have been a textbook case of suicide caused by rural distress barely interrupted the three-ring circus that ensued.<br /><br />A shallow pool of cliche and false assumptions suits everyone - a commentariat that has made no serious investment in understanding the complex tensions that drive India's agricultural economy, and a political class that uses this analytical vacuum to evade responsibility for rural distress.<br /><br />Take the prime minister's stirring call, asking political parties to unite to find a solution. On the face of it, the immediate reasons driving the current crisis - one, crop damage and two, falling commodity prices - hardly require booking Vigyan Bhawan for a three-day confabulation. The first can be addressed by significantly raising the compensation amount for crop damage, which, even after the much-ballyhooed 50 per cent increase over the previous slab, falls pitifully short of what farmers are investing. (In The Indian Express, Ashok Gulati suggests the enhanced compensation will cover roughly less than 50 per cent of the per hectare costs incurred by wheat farmers. Separately, we found it will not compensate cotton farmers more than 10 per cent of their expenses.)<br /><br />As a medium-term buffer against crop damage (which climate change threatens to make a regular feature), the prime minister may want to consider Gulati's suggestion for the government to significantly underwrite crop insurance. The current arrangement requires the farmer to pay a very high component of the premium, one of the factors why only a small fraction of agriculturists (5 per cent) have opted for insurance cover. To head off any potential rumblings from this governments 'suited-booted' support base, Narendra Modi only needs to invoke the US, which, as Gulati points out, underwrites 70 per cent of crop insurance premium.<br /><br />As for the falling commodity prices, this may have been the time, among other steps, to implement Modi's election-time promise of using the Swaminathan Commission formula to fix minimum support prices or MSP. (The commission suggested MSP should be at least 50 per cent of the farmers cost of production.) But the promise of generous price support has been dumped without suitable explanation. Instead, the government seems now enamoured of the Shanta Kumar committee report, which asks for the scaling down of the public distribution system (PDS). At any other time, a debate on revisiting food subsidies may be well in order, but someone needs to tell the government that now is perhaps not the best time to send out signals - overt and tacit - that will slow down the pace of procurement.<br /><br />Perhaps, that someone, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, could be chief ministers, even of Bharatiya Janata Party-run states. Raman Singh, for instance, whose successful turnaround of Chhattisgarh's PDS network is based on the very same ingredients - like near-universal coverage - that the Shanta Kumar report seeks to scrap. Or Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for instance, who is among a group of chief ministers that has written to the Centre expressing concern at the acute slowdown in NREGA disbursals, delays that have hit an all-time high in the past eight months.<br /><br />In all fairness, there was an attempt, in the hysteria of the past week, to use facts instead of hyperbole to corner the government for its somewhat disingenuous concern for the Indian farmer. Except the intervention came from the itinerant vice-president of the Congress, a party whose track record, contrary to Rahul Gandhi's exertions, belies its self-description as the Chief Saviour of Indian Peasantry. Yes, the Congress ordered a one-time exponential raise in MSP. Except it was in 2008. Seven years ago. Taking a longer view, since the nineties, the Grand Old Party has presided over a decline in virtually all the myriad support systems required to keep agriculture afloat: rural credit, public investment in agriculture, insurance cover and so on.<br /><br />None of this would be news to the political establishment; the gradual chipping away at the edifice of the rural economy predicates some sort of knowledge of that structure. But it is more convenient for everyone to debate the troubles of Indian agriculture as if it were some kind of karmic malaise, and not the outcome of flawed decision-making.<br /><br /><em>The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7</em></div>'
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Kissa kisan ka - Evading blame for rural distress -Sreenivasan Jain

-Business Standard Events after a farmer's suicide at an AAP rally encapsulate the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture The spectacle of political one-upmanship, blame, hyperbole (and even some Filmfare-worthy expressions of grief) triggered by the suicide of Gajendra Singh, a young man from Rajasthan at an Aam Aadmi Party rally in New Delhi, perfectly encapsulates the state of public discourse on Indian agriculture today. The discovery that his may not have been a textbook case of suicide caused by rural distress barely interrupted the three-ring circus that ensued. A shallow pool of cliche and false assumptions suits everyone - a commentariat that has made no serious investment in understanding the complex tensions that drive India's agricultural economy, and a political class that uses this analytical vacuum to evade responsibility for rural distress. Take the prime minister's stirring call, asking political parties to unite to find a solution. On the face of it, the immediate reasons driving the current crisis - one, crop damage and two, falling commodity prices - hardly require booking Vigyan Bhawan for a three-day confabulation. The first can be addressed by significantly raising the compensation amount for crop damage, which, even after the much-ballyhooed 50 per cent increase over the previous slab, falls pitifully short of what farmers are investing. (In The Indian Express, Ashok Gulati suggests the enhanced compensation will cover roughly less than 50 per cent of the per hectare costs incurred by wheat farmers. Separately, we found it will not compensate cotton farmers more than 10 per cent of their expenses.) As a medium-term buffer against crop damage (which climate change threatens to make a regular feature), the prime minister may want to consider Gulati's suggestion for the government to significantly underwrite crop insurance. The current arrangement requires the farmer to pay a very high component of the premium, one of the factors why only a small fraction of agriculturists (5 per cent) have opted for insurance cover. To head off any potential rumblings from this governments 'suited-booted' support base, Narendra Modi only needs to invoke the US, which, as Gulati points out, underwrites 70 per cent of crop insurance premium. As for the falling commodity prices, this may have been the time, among other steps, to implement Modi's election-time promise of using the Swaminathan Commission formula to fix minimum support prices or MSP. (The commission suggested MSP should be at least 50 per cent of the farmers cost of production.) But the promise of generous price support has been dumped without suitable explanation. Instead, the government seems now enamoured of the Shanta Kumar committee report, which asks for the scaling down of the public distribution system (PDS). At any other time, a debate on revisiting food subsidies may be well in order, but someone needs to tell the government that now is perhaps not the best time to send out signals - overt and tacit - that will slow down the pace of procurement. Perhaps, that someone, in the spirit of cooperative federalism, could be chief ministers, even of Bharatiya Janata Party-run states. Raman Singh, for instance, whose successful turnaround of Chhattisgarh's PDS network is based on the very same ingredients - like near-universal coverage - that the Shanta Kumar report seeks to scrap. Or Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for instance, who is among a group of chief ministers that has written to the Centre expressing concern at the acute slowdown in NREGA disbursals, delays that have hit an all-time high in the past eight months. In all fairness, there was an attempt, in the hysteria of the past week, to use facts instead of hyperbole to corner the government for its somewhat disingenuous concern for the Indian farmer. Except the intervention came from the itinerant vice-president of the Congress, a party whose track record, contrary to Rahul Gandhi's exertions, belies its self-description as the Chief Saviour of Indian Peasantry. Yes, the Congress ordered a one-time exponential raise in MSP. Except it was in 2008. Seven years ago. Taking a longer view, since the nineties, the Grand Old Party has presided over a decline in virtually all the myriad support systems required to keep agriculture afloat: rural credit, public investment in agriculture, insurance cover and so on. None of this would be news to the political establishment; the gradual chipping away at the edifice of the rural economy predicates some sort of knowledge of that structure. But it is more convenient for everyone to debate the troubles of Indian agriculture as if it were some kind of karmic malaise, and not the outcome of flawed decision-making. The writer anchors the ground reportage show Truth vs Hype on NDTV 24X7