-The Hindu Business Line The letter underlined that the MGNREGA has assumed more significance during the period of the pandemic The country’s top economists, researchers, and activists have written an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressing their concern about the funds crunch in MGNREGA and demanding immediate release of additional funds to ensure that the programme functions as the law requires. The letter, signed by several academics and intellectuals including Jean...

-Newsclick.in Dipa Sinha, economist and lead campaigner with the Right to Food Campaign, explains the myriad reasons for India faring worse on crucial hunger indicators and the way out. Economist Dipa Sinha, who teaches at the School of Liberal Studies at Ambedkar University, is actively involved with the Right to Food Campaign. In an interview with Newsclick, she explains why hunger is not an isolated concern but the result of a confluence...

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...

-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...

-Foundation of Agrarian Studies An influential section of Sri Lankan agricultural economists and scientists has deplored the recent course change in the country’s agricultural policy made by the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government. The decision by the government to ban the use and import of chemical fertilisers and pesticides in pursuit of a “100 per cent organic food producer” status for Sri Lanka has already had disastrous consequences for the economy of the...