-Scroll.in The Central government has thrown its weight behind traders, investors and corporations. Three ordinances approved at a cabinet meeting on June 3 were hailed as landmark decisions that would benefit Indian farmers and transform the agricultural sector. One of these, the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020, amends the existing act to remove all agricultural commodities from the list of essential commodities. The government assumes that “the freedom to produce, hold, move, distribute...

A recent survey that was conducted through telephonic interviews among 1,405 respondents across the states of Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, Rajasthan and Jharkhand reveals the precarious conditions of workers nearly 45 days after the announcement of COVID-19 lockdown. The report entitled Labouring Lives: Hunger, Precarity and Despair amid Lockdown tries to understand the extent (and depth) of job loss and hunger 45 days after the lockdown. Hunger and...

-TheWire.in ‘One India, One Agriculture Market’ slogan is an open declaration of the centralising objective of these reforms. The central government recently introduced major agricultural market reforms through three ordinances: The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Ordinance 2020, The Farming Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Ordinance, 2020, and The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Ordinance, 2020. Since the inauguration of the Indian constitution on January 26, 1950,...

-TheWire.in Even though India has had a few relatively successful models, contract farming has failed to take off in a meaningful manner. Of the three agriculture-related ordinances promulgated on June 5, 2020, the most predictable was ‘The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Ordinance, 2020’. Put simply, it provides a legal basis to the existing practice of contract farming in India’s agriculture and allied sectors. In 2018, the Union...

-Down to Earth Land use degradation creates ground for zoonotic disease like COVID-19 as the interaction and physical distance between animals and humans gets closer Land use change, which prepares the ground for zoonoses like the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), should be reversed urgently, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has said. Over 70 per cent of all natural, ice-free land in the world is affected by human use, according to...