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 […]
Business Week writes about the success of two commodities exchanges in India.
Two years ago government deregulation allowed two competing Indian exchanges, the National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX), which deals mostly with agricultural products, and the Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX), which mostly handles energy and metals, to open for business. The fully […]