-Down to Earth Ensuring that pulses sell at the minimum support price and distributing them under the public distribution system can help them find favour with farmers again When India went into its first lockdown in 2020, the government announced Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY), under which over 800 million people were to be provided rice, wheat, and pulses, in addition to the ration provided under the public distribution system...

-IndiaToday.in Swaraj Abhiyan's Jai Kisan Andolan in a letter to Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot sought the procurement of bajra in the state at the MSP of Rs 2,250. Jai Kisan Andolan, a part of the Swaraj Abhiyan outfit, has written to Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot seeking procurement of bajra at the MSP (minimum support price) of Rs 2,250. In the letter, National President of Jai Kisan Andolan Yogendra Yadav and the national...

The newly released Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India (NSS 77th Round) establishes the fact that the farm households are more and more relying on wage incomes instead of 'net incomes from crop cultivation' for their livelihoods. In Marxian lexicon, proletarisation (a term that we can loosely use for depeasantisation) refers to the process in which the farmers/ tillers are...

-Down to Earth  The past three decades have seen stagnation in acreage, production and productivity of pulses across the country due to a bevy of reasons that include availability of more profitable crops The primary reason behind India’s domestic shortage in pulses is stagnation of production over the past five decades. Overcoming the Pulses Crisis, a 2010 report by the Confederation of Indian Industry, states the production of pulses grew only by...

-Hindustan Times Supporters of the three farm laws have been arguing that the new regime will help farmers receive better prices by selling products in the open market rather than the APMCs. SAS data does not support such a claim That Indian agriculture has been distress-ridden is an accepted fact in post-reform India. However, this is often discussed more in terms of farmers’ suicides, especially during the last decade, or abysmally low...