-The Citizen.in This piece is a rejoinder to an article by D K Joshi, which appeared in ‘The Indian Express' on June 4, 2014. The main arguments made by the author are neither new nor unique. Many neoliberal economists, including some occupying crucial policy-making positions have been making arguments which propose dilution of Minimum Support Price (MSP) policies to take care of excess food stocks with the government and also control...
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Farmers look for green shoots-Ajay Vir Jakhar
-The Business Standard They were unimpressed by the UPA's misguided socialism, but they worry about the new regime's free-market orientation too Consider this paradox. The Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was decimated in the elections in spite of several years of good monsoon and rising agricultural production. Consider another paradox. This was the regime that implemented policies that were presumed to be pro-farmer: the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the...
More »Can India Reform Its Agriculture? -Ashwini K Swain
-The Diplomat Climate change is stressing an already struggling farm sector, but there is a way forward. Over the last decade, India's official position in global climate negotiations has been one of opposition to agricultural mitigation. At Doha (COP18), India joined other developing countries in demanding that any talk about agriculture must be in the realm of adaptation, not mitigation. India considers the farm sector out of bounds with respect to emissions...
More »Education agenda for Narendra Modi-Anurag Behar
-Live Mint Given the mandate that the BJP has received, it does have the political capital to support a new education agenda The tactical and strategic brilliance of the campaign that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ran is visible in the election results. This also suggests that the BJP government is likely to start off on the task of governance with very clear ideas and in all likelihood with some specific plans....
More »Strengthening India’s rule of law-Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav
-Live Mint Despite its importance, reform of India's legal institutions has been seen as a ‘second order' issue India is a young nation long ruled by old laws-its police, for example, are governed by such colonial-era statutes as the Police Act of 1861, which predates independence by nearly a century. And its expanding economy requires forward-looking regulatory mechanisms to foster markets while curbing crony capitalism. India is also a nation that must...
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