-Newsclick.in A guaranteed MSP system will also reduce public storage costs/wastage if it is complemented by a universal public distribution system. The year-long protest by farmers and workers compelled the Centre to repeal the three contentious farm laws, which were designed to further corporate encroachment in agriculture, on November 29. On December 11, the protest ended but not before the protesters reiterated their demand for a legal guarantee on Minimum Support Price...

-TheWire.in The campaign emphasised how the proposed NEP will result in budget cuts, elimination of reservations for the marginalised, fee hikes and a further rise of contractualisation and privatisation in higher education. New Delhi: More than 150 students, teachers and eminent public personalities on December 24 attended a nationwide 50-day campaign against the National Education Policy (NEP) at the Press Club of India (PCI) in the national capital. The PCI conference emphasised how...

-The Hindu Samyukt Kisan Morcha says it will not fight the elections. Ahead of the Punjab Assembly elections due early in 2022, 22 of the 32 Punjab-based farmer unions that were at the forefront of the agitation against the now repealed farm laws announced on Saturday that they would contest the election under the banner of ‘Samyukt Samaj Morcha’ even as the the umbrella body Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) that spearheaded the...

-The Telegraph The agrarian laws might have been repealed but are we any wiser about what it was that the farmers were so against, what reforms they could do with instead of the ones thrust upon them? Even in retreat over the farm laws, the Modi government adopted the same top-down approach it employed while bringing them in in May 2020. Pleasantly surprised as they were by the Prime Minister’s unexpected announcement,...

-TheWire.in Supriya RoyChowdhury's 'City of Shadows' is a compelling study of the lives of the poor in a rapidly globalising Bengaluru. The long caravans of workers leaving the cities for their villages during the national lockdown in 2020 made visible the large proportion of urban workers whose homes are in the villages. Combined with the farmers’ protests, they brought attention to the crisis in agriculture and the failure of agrarian livelihoods that...