-The Hindu The protesting farmers need sincerity and accountability from the Centre, not edification In light of protests against the new farm laws, the Centre has attempted to educate farmers — a form of instrumental reasoning based on exchange of superior information and data — to convince them of the merits of its reform agenda. Since it is presumed that complex matters of economic policy are beyond the intellectual capacities of agrarians,...

The World Economic Outlook – a bi-annual publication of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) -- released in October 2020 has anticipated that the economic progress made by the countries since the 1990s to reduce poverty would be turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic. On top of that, economic disparity would rise too in the post-COVID world because the crisis has disproportionately impacted women, informal sector workers and people with...

-The Indian Express Farmers’ genuine concerns must be addressed as soon as possible so that they can continue producing food and fibre needed for the ever-increasing population. In the early 1960s, near-famine conditions prevailed in India and some 10 million tonnes of wheat had to be imported from the US under the PL480 programme. The country’s SITuation was pejoratively dubbed “ship-to-mouth” existence, as foodgrains arriving via ships were immediately consumed. In 1963, Norman...

-Down to Earth Every day, 54, mostly developed countries give nearly $2 billion in support to their farmers The SITes of the farmers’ protests on the borders of Delhi are a microcosm of Indian peasantry — rich and poor, small and big, irrigated and rainfed and supported and not supported. The voices from these SITes have now merged into one clarion call: Guarantee government support to farmers by legalising the minimum support...

-ThePrint.in Researchers associated with Pennsylvania UniverSITy’s India study centre looked at agricultural markets of Bihar, Odisha and Punjab. They found that intermediaries are a rational response to the dominant structure of Indian farming. Most Indian farmers have tiny farms that yield meagre incomes. They face a multiplicity of risks, which jeopardises even these low incomes. These twin pressures are particularly acute in eastern India, manifest in the two states that were the...