-The Indian Express The pandemic revealed the precarious state of India’s informal sector. Localised production, trade and markets offer a better alternative to existing paradigm of development. Another wave of COVID, another round of lockdowns, another long journey back home for migrant workers. If there is one lesson we are learning after a year of COVID-19, it is that we have not learnt any lessons, at least not the crucial ones. 2020 exposed...

-The Tribune While attracting private capital investments in production, processing and marketing of high-value agriculture, the associated adverse socio-economic implications must be avoided. Last year, Parliament enacted the Farmers’ (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020. It is supposed to empower farmers to get engaged with upgraded value chain partners in a fair, transparent, mutually agreeable and remunerative manner to enhance their income by reducing marketing risks....

-The Indian Express Policy coordination between the Centre and states will be crucial for implementing this ambitious reform agenda. The National Statistical Office will release the second advance GDP estimates for 2020-21 at the end of February. The first advance estimate had, in early January, forecasted a contraction of 7.7 per cent in 2020-21. This was due largely to an expected, sharp contraction in both industry and services. The second advance estimates...

-The Hindu To show Indian agriculture as being net taxed to argue for the farm laws has poor conceptual validity Over the past three decades, a major rationale offered in favour of liberalising Indian agriculture was that farmers were “net taxed”. In other words, incomes of farmers were kept artificially lower than what they should have been. It was argued that this “net taxation” existed because protectionist policies deprived farmers of higher...

-The Telegraph Gandhi’s first satyagraha for the cause of farmers stands in sharp contrast to the passage of the three farm laws today Mahatma Gandhi’s first satyagraha in India was launched in Champaran in 1917 to save farmers from the exploitation of British indigo planters — the Corporates of that era engaged in contract farming. The protest bears close resemblance to the farmers’ agitation against the three farm laws that were framed...