-PTI/ Business Standard Potato prices in both producing and consuming areas across India have crashed 50 per cent to Rs 5-6 per kg this year on account of good rabi (winter) crop, as per the government data Potato prices in both producing and consuming areas across India have crashed 50 per cent to Rs 5-6 per kg this year on account of good rabi (winter) crop, as per the government data. While consumers...

Quite often it is argued by mainstream economists that a sizeable chunk of the Union Budget every year is wasted because the Government spends that on food and fertiliser subsidies. The burgeoning size of these two subsidies relative to the entire budget as well as the gross domestic product (GDP) is often used to build the argument that economic as well as environmental sustainability of the country is at stake...

-The Hindu To say that growth and inequality converge in terms of their effects on socio-economic outcomes is outrageous The Economic Survey 2021 (https://bit.ly/2OfqfVQ) does not seem to be a policy document derived straight from the empirical data of the economy or the social compulsions embedded in it. On the contrary, the Survey rings with policy postulates based on strong ideological overtones. Of interest would be Chapter 4, captioned ‘Inequality and Growth:...

-The Indian Express The “feminisation of agriculture” in the face of the agrarian crisis has, paradoxically, left women doubly even triply disadvantaged. Yet their concerns still remain largely unaddressed in policy. The large presence of women farmers at protests at Singhu, Tikri, and, lately, the Ghazipur borders of Delhi against the three new agriculture laws, marks a significant moment in the continuum of women’s political mobilisation in the country. Coming against the backdrop...

-The Indian Express It is the rural middle class — which experienced a roughly four-decade spell of prosperity from the 1970s and now has its back to the wall — that’s at the forefront of the agitation against the farm reform laws. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has defended his government’s agricultural reform laws by invoking Chaudhary Charan Singh and pointing to the “dayaniya sthiti (sorry plight)” of marginal farmers. These below-one-hectare cultivators...