-Vikalpind.in Much of the discourse on the three farm laws are influenced by certain prevailing myths about Indian agriculture and the food situation in the country within the academic and policy-making circles. First, there is a common perception, propagated by the ruling establishment, that India is a ‘food surplus’ nation, particularly with respect to cereals. Our farmers have allegedly over-produced cereals due to the MSP-based government support system. Secondly, any removal...

-Civil Society News When the lockdown began to ease in June, migrant workers who had left Ahmedabad for their villages started returning to the city in the hope of finding some employment. It hasn’t been easy. Industrial areas haven’t opened up fully and employers are going slow on taking on workers. Sunk in debt with insecure work, hunger now stalks migrant workers. Entire families have been living out in the open on worksites....

-The Indian Express Nearly 38 per cent respondents shared that their consumption of rice/wheat had decreased while 40.7 per cent said their consumption of pulses had come down and 57.6 per cent said their consumption of vegetables had reduced. Ahmedabad: The ‘Hunger watch’ survey carried out by Anna Suraksha Adhikar Abhiyan (ASAA), Gujarat to track the hunger situation amongst vulnerable and marginalised communities amid the of Covid-19 pandemic revealed that 20.6 per...

-TheWire.in The MP Migrant Workers Project found that 90% of migrant workers who returned to the state during the COVID-19 lockdown did not receive any kind of monetary assistance. New Delhi: Satish Ranjan* used to work in Pune as a construction worker. When the pandemic hit, he was forced to return to his home in Madhya Pradesh, like the lakhs of migrant workers who were forced to return – many by foot...

-The Indian Express Centre must make transparent efforts to push exports consistently and not follow the stop-go policy emanating from price controls for the Indian consumer market. The flashpoint between the agitating farmers and the central government is essentially rooted in the mismatch between the supply and demand for the wheat crop in India. The genesis of the current state of affairs stems from policies initiated over half a century ago when...