-TheWire.in The economists, who have engaged with issues of agricultural policy, said that the Centre's reforms were based on "wrong assumptions" about why farmers were unable to get remunerative prices. New Delhi: A group of senior economists have released an open letter to the Union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar calling for the repeal of the three contentious farm bills “which are not in the best interests of the small and marginal...

-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,...

-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...

-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...

-Review of Agrarian Studies Farmers’ incomes continue to be a concern in India because of the ongoing agrarian distress in India and depressed markets for agricultural commodities globally. The National Democratic Alliance government’s announcement that it would double farm incomes by 2022 led in 2016 to the establishment of a committee to devise strategies and mechanisms for doing so. The Committee on Doubling Farmers’ Incomes published its Report in 14 volumes....