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...

-TheIndiaForum.in The crises of Punjab’s agriculture are rooted in the same history that made it the granary of India. Ensuring sustainability for farmers and the farm sector requires an engagement with the shifting trajectories of agriculture over the last seven decades. Despite Punjab’s meagre size, the region has remained an important constituent in the self-imagination of the Indian nation. The imprints of Punjab’s agrarian economy and culture have continued to expand in...

-The Indian Express The final election manifesto will be released jointly with its alliance partners Congress and newly-formed Indian Secular Front (ISF). Kolkata: The Left Front in its draft election manifesto for the Assembly polls on Thursday promised to set up a separate ministry for migrant workers, acquire land for projects after consensus and safeguard minority rights among other promises. The CPI (M)-led Left Front, which ruled the state for a record 34...

-Hindustan Times Women are not dropping out. They are being pushed out by the lack of demand for their labour. There has been movement out of agriculture into informal and casual jobs, where the work is sporadic, and often less than 30 days at a stretch. The new modern sector opportunities, especially in high value-added service sectors, mostly accrue to men. Why is women’s employment declining in India? The thrust of the...

-The Hindu To show Indian agriculture as being net taxed to argue for the farm laws has poor conceptual validity Over the past three decades, a major rationale offered in favour of liberalising Indian agriculture was that farmers were “net taxed”. In other words, incomes of farmers were kept artificially lower than what they should have been. It was argued that this “net taxation” existed because protectionist policies deprived farmers of higher...