Insufficient economic diversification, from low value added to higher value added activities, has been one of the important failures of the Indian development trajectory. Despite decades of relatively high growth of GDP, most of the work force remains trapped in…
Rubber prices, which had recovered a little after the fall during the pandemic, have collapsed again, with the farmers in Kerala, which grows 80 per cent of the country’s rubber crop, being badly hit. The central government has flatly refused…
The hegemony of imperialism is invariably associated with an agrarian crisis in countries of the global south; in fact agrarian crisis is just the other side of the ascendancy of imperialism. This is evident from the case of Indian agriculture.…
The global food crisis has now grown to such proportions that everyone is talking about it (even though world leaders are doing relatively little about it). It has become an article of faith to blame the war in Ukraine for…
There are a number of misconceptions about Indian agriculture which, if not removed forthwith, can have potentially adverse effects on the ongoing kisan agitation against the three farm laws. The first of these is the belief that corporate encroachment on…
The Modi government’s attempt to “explain” away India’s slipping from being 94th on the world hunger index in 2020 to 101st in 2021, a rank well below that of neighbours Pakistan, Nepal or Bangladesh, by questioning the “methodology” of the…
Climate change is posing immediate threats to humanity, and indeed to all living organisms on the planet, in extreme weather events across the globe. Other environmental stresses include rising water levels or falling water tables, desertification and salination. Agriculture—especially industrial…
Though not featuring in any of the three farm laws, the Minimum Support Price (MSP) at which the government promises to procure 25 different commodities through different agencies, is a central issue in the standoff between the government and protesting…
The disease ripping through the country is only one of the destructive forces affecting the lives of hundreds of millions of Indians. The dramatic increase in hunger is another. Like devastation wrought by the current surge in coronavirus infections, this…
The world has been preoccupied with the Covid-19 pandemic, and this has also affected policymakers everywhere. There is much more recognition today of the terrible effects of underfunding public health over decades and how this affects the resilience of economies…
