-The Telegraph New Delhi: Women engaged in farming have converged from across the country in the capital demanding a separate identity as "women farmers" with access to the same rights and entitlements as their male counterparts, besides land records classified according to gender. A key issue pertains to the ownership of land as patriarchy continues to deny women such rights which, in turn, blocks their access to subsidies and other inputs provided...

-The Indian Express Advancing rights of women farmers can revolutionise the rural ecosystem The stereotypical image of an Indian farmer is a mustachioed man, clad in a white dhoti with farming tools in hand. The reality is the Indian agricultural landscape is fast being feminised. Already, women constitute close to 65 per cent of all agricultural workers. An even greater share, 74 per cent of the rural workforce, is female. Despite their...

-Hindustan Times The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India’s new certification regulation is going to hinder the growth of the sector. Instead of targeting small farmers, why not make laws that require mandatory labelling of foods grown with pesticides, chemicals or GMO etc? The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) recently announced the Draft Food and Standards (Organic Food) Regulations, 2017, aimed at curbing sale of fake organic...

-TheWire.in Legislative action that primarily looks at cattle mobility as ‘acts of smuggling cattle out of state for slaughter’ is deeply misguided and betrays a misunderstanding of how India’s cattle have been bought and sold since the British Raj. Like many poorly drafted laws, the recently notified Livestock Markets (Regulation) Rules is so pre-occupied with its self-righteousness that it fails to realise the harm that it would cause. If the colonial era’s...

-BusinessWorld.in There simply are no easy solutions to the crisis in Indian agriculture, a product of decades of neglect and poor policies It is quite macabre, really — the barely concealed glee that seems to course through liberal analysts and intellectuals whenever it looks like Prime Minister Narendra Modi is heading for trouble. Macabre, because as the latest series of protests and events centred around farmers show, it is as ghoulish as...