-Scroll.in The demand for equitable access to quality education and healthcare should complement agriculture reforms in the country. It has been more than six months since the Samyukt Kisan Morcha – the umbrella organisation representing protesting Indian farmers – ended its 15-month-long agitation at Delhi’s borders against the three farm laws. Some of their demands were met, while their demand for a Minimum Support Price guarantee remains unfulfilled. These developments do little to...

-Livemint.com/ HowIndiaLives.com Even as it presses for market reforms in agriculture, the Centre has been actively using the basket of schemes wholly funded by it to widen the social security net for farmers. Expect that to continue in the coming Budget In 2016, the BJP-led government set itself the target to double farmers’ incomes by 2022. An inter-ministerial committee set up to recommend strategies to meet this target highlighted seven sources of...

-The Tribune In India, there is a concerted campaign to discredit the arhtiya, building the case for bringing in agri-business companies. There is certainly a need to regulate the middlemen, but the American experience shows how the consolidation of the meat industry, leading to market concentration in the hands of a few companies, is making it difficult for livestock farmers to survive. WHILE Indian policy makers and economists haven’t drawn any lessons...

-The Telegraph The agrarian laws might have been repealed but are we any wiser about what it was that the farmers were so against, what reforms they could do with instead of the ones thrust upon them? Even in retreat over the farm laws, the Modi government adopted the same top-down approach it employed while bringing them in in May 2020. Pleasantly surprised as they were by the Prime Minister’s unexpected announcement,...

-Livemint.com We do need reforms to make farming remunerative again but it will take a truly participatory effort On 19 November, in a sudden announcement, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the withdrawal of three contentious farm laws passed by Parliament last September. And they were repealed on the very first day that the House convened for its winter session. Like the way they were passed last year, the repeal was also done...