-TheFederal.com On April 15, 2009, farmers Rajan and PP Baby were surprised to see hundreds of trucks unloading sand in a field adjacent to their land in Kizhakkambalam in Ernakulam district of Kerala, an eastern suburb of Kochi. But the two, who also happened to be CPI(M) activists, were busy with the Lok Sabha elections that were being held in the state the next day and unable to look into the...
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In spate, Mahananda washes away what pandemic had spared for many north Bihar families -Wali Ahmad
-The Indian Express Mirchantola is one the 25 villages in Amour Vidhan Sabha constituency in north Bihar that has been braving floods and massive land erosion over the past few years. This year, in Mirchantola alone, 100 families have been uprooted. Kishanganj: It’s a race against time for 25-year-old Jahane Alam to save his mud house from the ravaging Mahananda river that has already swept away several dwellings of Mirchantola village. Alam’s...
More »Is This the Market Reform Indian Agriculture Needs? -Sudha Narayanan
-TheIndiaForum.in The rules of the game in markets have changed dramatically. But there are problems with the fundamental premise of the approach, there are doubts about the future of state intervention & there are major lacunae in the bills, all making the outcome uncertain. On 5 June 2020, amidst growing concern over the seismic collapse of the economy and the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Government of India promulgated three ordinances...
More »The men behind APMC, MSP and procurement -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express The idea of a Minimum Support Price for crops came first from a visiting US soil scientist and fertiliser expert The institution of ‘mandis’ is as old as markets where wholesale trading in primary produce has been taking place since time immemorial. APMCs or Agricultural Produce Market Committees are of more recent vintage and the creation of Sir Chhotu Ram. In 1939, the legendary farmer leader, as Development Minister in...
More »India’s new labour codes fail migrant workers whose vulnerability was highlighted by lockdown crisis -Divya Varma, Kavya Bharadkar & Raghav Mehrotra
-Scroll.in The systemic, structural reasons that precipitated their distress have been completely ignored. The images of devastation faced by migrant workers in the aftermath of the Covid-19 lockdown imposed in March shook the conscience of the nation: the scale of the problem and the severity of the distress pushed this hitherto invisible population into the spotlight of public and policy attention. More than 75 days into the lockdown, after the crisis had almost...
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