-Down to Earth Why are farmers protesting the government’s ’reforms’, ask many. A look at how Bihar’s farmers have fared may explain The recent controversy about India’s newly minted farm laws have brought back into focus what Nitish Kumar did a decade-and-a-half ago: Shutting down the mandi (wholesale markets for agricultural produce) system in 2006. The much-touted ‘reform’ has impacted the state’s farmers, and not in a good way. Farmers have had to...

-The Telegraph Narendra Modi’s Agricultural Reforms have angered farmers The farmers’ protest near New Delhi is a major political event challenging the Narendra Modi government. The participation is widespread and it is growing by the day. That farmers have been unhappy with their economic condition was evident from the number of marches to Delhi during the past two years. This time the protest is about three bills passed in Parliament in September...

-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...

-The Tribune Distressed as they were, the final death blow is sought to be delivered in the Agricultural Reforms. Why not have MSP till a better alternative is found? Why let the oligarchs loose to prey on farmers? Was there a demand from farmers for these reforms? How has the Centre decided suo motu that this would benefit farmers? IT was the early 1960s and I spent two years in my ancestral...

-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...