-Bloomberg When farmers in the scorched village of Horti in Western India were struggling to raise money for a canal, they turned to an unlikely source: a crowdfunding website called FuelADream. The farmers had never heard of crowdfunding before, but a local non-profit group suggested the site and helped them write a proposal that explained how a canal would help feed local families. Within weeks, they had raised Rs 300,000 ($4,490) from...

-The Hindu Business Line Govt’s production and distribution processes are out of sync with consumption patterns Of late, with growing income and awareness about nutritious food, there has been a noticeable decrease in the consumption of rice (a high-carb food) in Indian households. This change in consumption pattern, however, is not reflected in India’s agriculture policy which continues to revolve around rice and wheat. Moreover, current policies related to production, procurement, storage...

-The Indian Express The incentive structure, currently skewed in favour of rice and wheat, needs to become crop-neutral High prices of pulses are upsetting the food budget of many poor families. Soaring retail prices of dals — urad at Rs. 170/kg, tur/arhar at Rs160/kg, gram/chickpea at Rs 127/kg, moong at Rs 111/kg and masoor at Rs 100/kg — have made dal a luxury for the dal-bhaat and dal-roti eating population. But not...

-TheWire.in The question to ask is whether it makes environmental sense or effects social justice to ship our dals from across the seas? Pulses — that group of legume crops which includes chickpeas, cowpeas, moong beans, red kidney beans, urad beans, lentils and diverse grams. No matter what your personal choice of dal is though, India is probably eating many if not most of them. But as the world’s largest consumer of...

-The Hindu The state has become exclusively concerned with the interests of globalised capital and the domestic corporate-financial oligarchy aligned with it. The income squeeze on peasants is one consequence Central to the “reforms” introduced in 1991 was not a “retreat of the state” in favour of the “market” as is commonly supposed, but a change in the nature of the state. This change was not necessarily a conscious decision; it was...