-Livemint.com Agriculture is not only crucial for what happens to growth, inflation and rural distress, it is also politically important given the simmering discontent among farmers in the last two years Last week, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) declared that the south-west monsoon has covered the entire country, 15 days earlier than normal. This may be a cause for celebration considering the distress in agriculture in the last four years. Agriculture is...

-RuralIndiaOnline.org Imagine a democratic protest where a million farmers, labourers and others march to the capital and compel discussion of the exploding crisis of the countryside in a special three-week session of Parliament India’s agrarian crisis has gone beyond the agrarian. It’s a crisis of society. Maybe even a civilizational crisis, with perhaps the largest body of small farmers and labourers on earth fighting to save their livelihoods. The agrarian crisis is no...

-Livemint.com Despite claims of an economic recovery, rural wage growth of non-agricultural labourers continued to be in negative territory for the fourth month in a row Data released by the Central Statistics Office last month suggested a recovery in economic growth during the fourth quarter of 2017-18, with the economy expanding by 7.7% compared to that in the first quarter, when growth was at its lowest at 5.7%. This has given some...

-The Hindu Demand for potable water will outstrip supply by 2030, says study The NITI Aayog on Thursday released the results of a study warning that India is facing its ‘worst’ water crisis in history and that demand for potable water will outstrip supply by 2030 if steps are not taken. Nearly 600 million Indians faced high to extreme water stress and about 2,00,000 people died every year due to inadequate access to...

-The Indian Express We have, indeed, entered a regime of “permanent surpluses” in most crops — a reality our policymakers are unable to grasp, stuck as they are in the era of the Essential Commodities Act. If there is one thing that has changed in Indian agriculture in recent times, it is supply response — the ability of farmers to increase production when prices go up. Traditionally, the supply curve in most...