-The Financial Express Two years of bad rain makes even Punjab vulnerable When a Punjab is flagged as an area of some risk following bad rain, it is time to get seriously worried. The state may have, as ratings agency Crisil points out in its latest report on Indian agriculture, as much as 98.8% of its cropped area under irrigation, but with a 50.4% shortfall in rain last year and a likely...

-The Hindu The fact that food companies prosper but farmers commit suicide shows that profits are in the market, not the farm. It is time to replicate the Amul story many times over In the ongoing debates on the new land acquisition bill, the potential of agribusiness to address agrarian distress has not been explored. There are several domestic agriculture companies, both listed and private, that are doing extremely well amidst an...

-Outlook Even the worst-governed states can improve their PDS and ensure grain for the poorest. Look at Madhya Pradesh. THE National Food Security Act (NFSA),  2013, is not in very good health. Two years after it came into force, just a few states are implementing it. Others are still struggling with the identification of eligible households, public distribution system (PDS) reforms and other preparations. Yet, recent evidence suggests that some states...

-Ideas for India In 2007, Bihar introduced the coupon system in PDS to curb leakages at fair price shops. This column argues that even though the administrative logic of the coupon system is fundamentally sound, such reform can be effective only when accompanied by institutional transformations that broker change in the existing local politics of inclusion and exclusion.  The performance of Bihar’s public distribution system (PDS) remains a topic of considerable national...

-The Hindu Business Line No crop diversification efforts will work so long as free electricity offsets the costs of pumping out groundwater Subsidies have for long been a necessary evil, a vote-bank silver bullet. But its relevance stands challenged in today’s increasingly market-oriented economic order. The recent US declaration of giving differential treatment to developing countries, with regard to farm subsidies, brings up the long standing issue of slashing subsidies that have...