-Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, December 2018 (WP-2018-026) There are three goals of agricultural development in India. These are: (a) achieving high growth by raising productivity; (b) inclusiveness by focusing on lagging regions, small farmers and women; and (c) sustainability of agriculture. In this paper, we will address two questions: (a) How far India progressed in the three goals of agriculture in recent decades? (b) What are the policies...

-Scroll.in Full-day, quality childcare can make a crucial difference in India’s fight against malnutrition, and can possibly enhance incomes of working women. Savitaben is a tobacco worker in Rasnol village, Gujarat. She has two young children under five years of age, and every morning she leaves them in a crèche run by the Self-Employed Women’s Association or SEWA, a trade union of over 15 lakh poor, self-employed women workers. The children are...

-The Indian Express Insecurity, more than poverty or indebtedness, is the key economic issue that politicians must address If social inequality is the most acutely felt social problem in India, insecurity, more than poverty, is the most acutely felt economic problem. While most measures suggest that only around one-fifth of the population today is under the official poverty line, large sections of those even much above that line are subject to...

-The Hindu Election jolt makes party look at ways to boost rural income; BJP chief commissions survey The defeat in the Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh has made the government go back to the drawing board over the issue of rural distress, and some measures to bolster incomes in the countryside may be announced by the end of the winter session of Parliament. While the problems plaguing the agriculture sector...

-The Indian Express Assembly election results show that deceiving farmers comes with a price Frustration on the farms has reached an inflexion point. All of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promises could actually go against him. To gauge if the farmers’ anger can become a potent political force in 2019, it is important to understand the “farmer’s identity”. Identities rarely exist in neat silos, and that is true of the farmer as...