Aaditya Mattoo, Deepak Mishra and Ashish Narain, in the Times of India, on the problem and solution for Indian agriculture:
So, here’s the paradox: the hard-working Indian farmer — one of the world’s low-cost producers — is unable to compete globally.
What is hobbling the Indian giant? A recent World Bank study finds that the biggest problems [...]
Anyone who writes about there being “two Indias” is necessarily wrong. Anyone who describes India’s jettisoning of the licence raj in 1991 using words like “neo-liberal” is necessarily confused. And anyone who writes about Indian agriculture quoting P Sainath and no one else is necessarily unbalanced. Rajinder Sahota, writing in the Financial Times (they actually [...]
This video of the Nandigram issue is distressing. I think one of the most cogent views on the SEZ issue are summed up by Nitin Desai in the article Are SEZs a good idea?
Some interesting commentary in the papers this week:
Anantha Nageswaran’s opening salvo, in the newly launched Mint:
Central bankers in most of the developed world have taken that to heart in dealing with financial markets. Financial markets, in theory, have more participants than those engaged in the economic marketplace. Hence, the outcomes of their buying and selling [...]
Setting up a commodity futures market is the first attempt to reform agriculture
Why have reforms not improved the lot of the Indian farmer as much as it has improved, say, the lot of an educated city dweller? One blogger (can’t remember exactly who) made the point very succinctly. Well, because there has been no ‘reform’ [...]
Ever since I first read about the Singur controversy, a bee has been buzzing in my bonnet. It finally bit. Six months ago, I had written a post about how the TATA Motors decision to set up a plant in West Bengal was disastrous. However I wrote that post merely from the labour trouble perspective. [...]
How much of Dr Manmohan Singh’s talk on reforming agriculture will get translated into action?
Inaugurating the Second Agriculture Summit 2006 organised jointly by the Ministry of Agriculture and FICCI, the Prime Minister declared that the endeavour of his government would be to bridge each of the four deficit viz. the public investment and credit deficit, [...]
Resolving the ‘agrarian crisis’ requires understanding the laws of economics
P Sainath’s years of experience covering India’s countryside lends a credibility to his voice. How unfortunate it is then that he should expend it on framing the issue in partisan, rich vs poor, urban vs rural terms. Here’s an excerpt from a recent interview he gave [...]
Farmers are killing themselves because the government has denied them economic freedom
But if the crisis is an opportunity to reform agriculture, will Prime Minister Manmohan Singh take it up?
The Times of India reports:
In a remote village in Tamil Nadu, little Nirmala (12), rolls her nimble fingers over a sheaf of tobacco leaves, pins them adroitly into a tumti yale and seals the edges. She has to do this about 2,000 times a day, like she has been doing for over two years now. [...]
Make way for the king
It has already made its way to China. President George W Bush will announce its re-entry into the United States after a long time. The Indian government is making headway opening the doors to Australia, and even hard-to-reach Japan. The Indian mango is beginning to go places.
India is the world’s [...]
Any attention the Indian government pays to modernise the agriculture sector is welcome. More so if the attention involves private participation. And even more so, if it has anything to do with modernising farm markets.
Some of the biggest names in corporate India want to join hands with the government to develop terminal markets for agricultural [...]
A V Rajwade, in an op-ed in the Business Standard complains that the economy’s changing, but leaders aren’t. He covers many of the things we’ve discussed here on IEB — among them, the re-emergence of manufacturing & the (somewhat) increased interest in agriculture. However, to me the most interesting portion was this tidbit [...]
A key factor that can make markets work better is integration of various sub-markets. And it doesn’t happen simply by constructing tarred roads (even that is needed) but by demolishing regulations. Roading is the technical part of integrating markets, the political and more onerous part is the regulatory part. But why integration? Because deregulated common [...]
Sonia Faleiro writes in her superb article on Vidarbha’s farmers of something an activist there said to her:
Women tell me that each evening, they stand at the door terrified that their husband may not return.
Read the full thing.
Would any of the readers or fellow contributors of this blog like to offer a diagnosis and a [...]
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