-Economic and Political Weekly Though the 16-point action plan for agriculture laid down in the 2020 Union Budget continues prioritising subsidies and safety nets over agricultural investments, it does not make any fundamental improvements in the allocations towards these heads. Please click here to access the article. ...

-The Indian Express The FM’s other ideas for agriculture, especially on Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF), which she repeated this year, need to be tested before it becomes a national policy. In her Budget speech, Nirmala Sitharaman spelled out sixteen measures to reboot agriculture and re-affirmed the Modi government’s resolve to double farmers’ incomes by 2022. Agriculture is categorized by her as “Aspirational India”. All these sixteen measures are broadly in the...

-The Indian Express All such investments will go a long way to augment farmers’ incomes in a sustainable manner. Else, I am afraid, much of the talk in the Union budget for agri-reforms will remain mere rhetoric. Although the Union budget is basically an accounting exercise of revenues and expenditures for the coming year, economy-watchers anxiously wait for the finance minister to announce major economic reforms. In that sense, the budget of...

-The Indian Express Reform of grain management system could free up resources for infrastructure investment. With GDP growth rate plummeting to 4.5 per cent and with the agriculture GDP (GDPA) growth at 2.1 per cent in the second quarter of this fiscal year, everyone concerned with the economy is anxious. The question being asked is whether the Indian economy can be put back on the 7-8 per cent growth trajectory and can...

-Financial Express A study by ICRIER researchers ashok gulati and Pritha Banerjee shows how problematic the fertiliser policy is—for farmers, industry, the environment and the government. India’s experience with fertilisers, in the later part of the Green Revolution, prompted it to adopt a policy of subsidising fertilisers. In 1977, the country had a total NPK (nitrogenous, phosphatic and potassic) fertiliser consumption of 4.3 million metric tonnes (mmt) and per hectare usage...