-The Financial Express A half-dozen years ago, I participated in a conference on water resource challenges in India. I remember Upmanu Lall, professor at Columbia University, graphically and bluntly making the point that Punjab’s water table was not far from collapse. This has been known for years, and there have been feeble efforts to deal with the problem, but they have been far short of what is needed. My own understanding...

-The Hindu Without government support, farmers pay the price for a bumper crop they labour so hard to produce The ongoing farmers’ agitation has taken on a shockingly violent form. Discussion has revolved around an apparent paradox: why are farmers rioting after a bumper crop? But any student of economics knows that prices fall after bumper harvests, which is good for consumers but terrible for farmers. This is why the government needs...

-The Hindu Fundamental problems of crop and regional bias of MSP policy, govt. procurement and access to institutional credit need to be addressed. Agricultural distress is often viewed as a short-term phenomenon in which farmers look for support from various quarters on account of being unable to get a gainful return due to price crash, poor marketing facilities, rising credit burden, increasing cost of inputs and frequent occurrence of natural calamities. A...

-The Indian Express On agriculture, three years into the Modi government, while many steps have been taken to realise promises made in 2014, others have fallen by the wayside With the Modi government completing three years in office, it is time to assess its performance in various sectors. We focus here on agriculture. Without robust growth in agriculture, “sabka saath, sabka vikas” will remain an empty slogan. There are two ways to evaluate...

-TheWire.in Irrespective of the marital status of women, access to safe abortion services and quality post-abortion care, including counselling, need to be legally guaranteed. On February 28, 2017, the Supreme Court refused to allow a woman to abort her 26-week-old foetus that would be born with Down syndrome, a congenital disorder that postpones the onset of developmental and intellectual features. Admitting that the child may suffer from physical and mental abnormalities, the...