-Financial Express We have been hearing the expression ‘Industry 4.0’ ever since the idea of ‘smart factory’ was unveiled in Hannover in April 2013. Many opine ‘Agriculture 4.0’ akin to 4G of telecom. I believe Agriculture 4.0 is “going back to basics, but with technology as its underpinning” to usher in sustainability, in the wake of climate change and degradation of our agricultural ecosystems. We need to re-look at agriculture with...
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Prabhat Patnaik, an economist and former economics professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, interviewed by Kaushal Shroff (The Caravan)
-CaravanMagazine.in In the budget unveiled in July, the finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman ambitiously claimed that India’s economy would hit $5 trillion by 2025. In the weeks that followed, the Central Statistics Office revealed that the gross domestic product growth rate for the April–June quarter fell to a six-year low of five percent; the Reserve Bank of India cleared a surplus transfer of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the union government; and...
More »Economic crisis: Why it suits neoliberals to point fingers solely on demonetisation 'shock' -Prabhat Patnaik
-Newsclick.in The roots of the present economic slowdown squarely lie within the neoliberal trajectory, which has led to a crisis of overproduction. Demonetisation and ‘hasty’ GST only aggravated it. With former prime minister Manmohan Singh resurfacing on the political landscape and articulating once more the orthodox neoliberal position, one can now clearly discern three distinct perspectives on the current economic slowdown. The first is the orthodox neoliberal position that Singh has now articulated....
More »Explained: The idea of 'zero-budget' farming, and why scientists are sceptical -Yashee
-The Indian Express Addressing the 14th Conference of Parties (COP14) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) on Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned that India was "focusing on Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF)". In her Budget speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had spoken of the need to “go back to basics”, and to “replicate this innovative model (that) can help in doubling our farmers’ income”. The National Academy of...
More »Top farm scientists body rejects zero budget natural farming -Harish Damodaran and Parthasarathi Biswas
-The Indian Express This comes even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi, addressing the 14th Conference of Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification on Monday, mentioned that “we are focusing on ZBNF”. India’s premier academic body of agricultural scientists has hit out at Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF), terming it as an “unproven” technology bringing no incremental value gain to either farmers or consumers. “The government should not needlessly invest capital...
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