-The Tribune The economic argument in support of market reforms, claiming that farm incomes go up when the number of farmers recedes, has turned out to be untrue. America has lost more than 5 million farms in less than 100 years, and Australia 25 per cent of its farms between 1980 and 2002. The speed at which farmers across the globe have got out of agriculture hasn’t increased farm incomes, but...
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What India’s farm crisis really needs -Christophe Jaffrelot and Hemal Thakker
-The Indian Express To solve India’s deep agrarian crisis, more public investment and government support are needed, not the new farm laws The farmers’ movement invites us to revisit the trajectory of India’s agriculture so as to understand its real problems. Beginning in the mid-1960s, India and, especially, Punjab experienced a massive productivity boom as a result of widespread adoption of Green Revolution technologies. This transition was driven by public investment in...
More »Future of Indian agriculture and small farmers: Role of policy, regulation and farmer agency -Sukhpal Singh
-Down to Earth blog The distress among small farmers in India is market-driven to a large extent in both ways — too much protection (minimum support price) or too little. The question of future of Indian agriculture has been around for some time now since the agrarian distress and crisis in the sector. It has become important in the context of the spate of recent reforms that include permitting private wholesale markets,...
More »The Threat of Corporate Interests Is a Key Unifying Factor in the Farmer Protests -Ranjini Basu
-TheWire.in While rich farmers, who were so far aloof from the struggle, have been compelled to join the small peasantry in the face of a larger corporate threat, it is yet to be seen if the protests will temper existing inequalities. The present farmers’ struggle knocking at the doors of the capital is a culmination of many streams of ideologies, concerns and a wide class coalition. Like any dynamic mass movement, the...
More »Convergence of agrarian discontent in South Asia -Ahilan Kadirgamar and Hashim bin Rashid
-The Hindu With protests becoming catalysts for anti-authoritarian struggle, the air is ripe for new visions of rural emancipation Those familiar with the systematic attack on agriculture in South Asia over the last decades will not be surprised at the ongoing farmers’ protests in India. It could have been Pakistan, where farmers protesting for support prices were beaten up and arrested in Lahore only a month ago, or Sri Lanka, where shortages...
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