-The Hindu With protests becoming catalysts for anti-authoritarian struggle, the air is ripe for new visions of rural emancipation Those familiar with the systematic attack on agriculture in South Asia over the last decades will not be surprised at the ongoing farmers’ protests in India. It could have been Pakistan, where farmers protesting for support prices were beaten up and arrested in Lahore only a month ago, or Sri Lanka, where shortages...

-The Indian Express The realities of torture and its prosecution in India would temper our expectations from this one development. The Supreme Court needs to ensure robust implementation of its order and simultaneously plug the gaps so that incidents of torture are curtailed. In a bid to curb torture, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court recently mandated that CCTV cameras be installed in police stations and offices of other investigative agencies....

-The Indian Express For a healthy agrarian sector, the state must strengthen and protect the position of the cultivator. As long as land acquisition continues at its current pace, there is little chance of that happening. As farmers from Punjab and Haryana force the central government into unconditional talks, demanding nothing less than a repeal of the three new farm laws, the BJP-led NDA government insists the reforms are “farmer-friendly”. The farm...

-Newsclick.in As the farmers from Punjab and Haryana camp outside Delhi, Prof Judge explains the nature of the agriculture crisis gripping Punjab, why the three farm laws will prove disastrous to them, and the Narendra Modi government’s indifferent attitude towards their problems. Currently the president of the Indian Sociological Society, Professor Paramjit Singh Judge taught at the Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, for well over two decades. Social Change Through land reforms...

-Society for Social and Economic Research The economic reforms which were started in 1991 shifted the focus of fertilizer policies away from playing a leading role in building the fertilizer industry and ensuring the availability of fertilizers at affordable prices to farmers. Under the neo-liberal policy framework, reducing the fiscal burden of fertilizer subsidies and the foreign exchange burden of fertilizer-related imports became the overriding concerns of the state.  Interestingly, the post-liberalisation...