-The Hindu In the middle of the pandemic, the FCI holds the key to warding off a looming crisis of hunger and starvation For several years now, the Food Corporation of India (FCI) has drawn attention for all the wrong reasons. Set up under the Food Corporations Act 1964, in its first decade, the FCI was at the forefront of India’s quest of self-sufficiency in rice and Wheat following the Green Revolution,...

-Newsclick.in The lockdown has got the government talking about agri ‘reforms’ again, but the exploitation of India’s weakest farmers continues unchecked. It is a cruel irony that in the sixth week of the nationwide lockdown, the government is talking up omnibus agriculture “reforms” as if they can mitigate the growing distress in rural India. Reforms, no doubt, implies stricter compliance with online registration and payment rules, more focus on market-based pricing, and...

-Vikalp.ind.in The unplanned countrywide COVID-19 lockdown has resulted in widespread distress to both principal classes among the rural population namely the peasants and agricultural workers. Peasants suffered in the first place from crop losses due to unplanned lockdown induced delay in harvesting of mechanised crops. Apart from this an additional problem for peasants was the elevated fluctuation in prices (fall in nominal prices more often than not) of both crops and...

-The Hindu Farmers’ cooperation, technological upgrading and favourable public policies can help India deal with the pandemic The current national lockdown to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the problems of food, nutrition and livelihood security confronting a large number of rural people, in particular, migrants to cities. While some measures have been announced, such as provision of additional rice or Wheat, some pulses and oil free of cost, as well as...

-Society for Social and Economic Research The sudden announcement of a national lockdown to contain the spread of COVID-19 has resulted in a severe disruption of food supply chains. The lockdown was announced without any preparation, and nothing was mentioned about excluding agricultural production and marketing operations from the purview of the lockdown when the Prime Minister first announced these restrictions. Once the lockdown was announced, governments scrambled to keep the...