In each of the last three years – from 2020 through 2022 – Indian banks lent more money to retail customers purchasing homes than they did to farmers. In fiscal year (FY)2021-22 commercial banks gaveRs. 17.54 lakh crore worth of housing loans, while agriculture and allied activities got Rs. 15.16 lakh crore. That is nearly 14 percent less. In FY 2021 and FY 2020 – one of which saw a...
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Sowing a crisis (Editorial)
-The Hindu Business Line The Centre should pay attention to fertiliser subsidy which is overshooting estimates by unacceptably large margins The economic crisis in India’s South Asian neighbours has turned the spotlight on fiscal profligacy leading economies on the path to ruin. While this has sparked debate on our States doling out freebies and subsidies, the fact is that the Centre too has some soul-searching to do on this front. Even as...
More »Fortification of rice is not the correct solution to end malnutrition in Chhattisgarh, say fact-finding team members who visited the state
-Press release by by Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA-Kisan Swaraj) and the Right To Food Campaign (RTFC) dated June 20, 2022 Raipur/ New Delhi: Activists of Right to Food Campaign (RTFC) and Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA) urged the Chhattisgarh government to abandon its rice fortification interventions. They appealed to the state government that it should not get coerced into distributing fortified rice in the food schemes...
More »Lessons from Rs 2 – Rs 100 Tomato pendulum
-The New Indian Express The steep fluctuation of prices in a crop whose consumption and cultivation cycles are well documented speaks volumes about the patchy intervention measures taken over the years. The retail price of tomato has hit a high of Rs 100 per kg in Tamil Nadu just a couple of months after prices dropped to as low as Rs 2 per kg. There were reports from across the state about...
More »A New Paradign for Indian Agriculture: From Agroindustry to Agroecology (2022) -Neelam Patel, Bruno Dorin, and Ranveer Nagaich
-NITI Aayog Working Paper, ISBN: 978-81-953811-7-3 Abstract - The importance of agriculture in an economy usually declines as it climbs the development ladder. Raising agriculture productivity has been known to be an important precursor. Labour productivity in agriculture can either be increased by higher land productivity or higher land availability per farmer and mechanisation. In India, however, the dramatic increase in land productivity through industrial farming has caused severe environmental damage and...
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