In September, India passed three bills that immediately led to protests by farmers demanding to repeal the legislation. The new laws seek to remove the government’s minimum support price for produce that shielded India’s farmers from free-market forces for decades. In allowing the farmers to...
As India completes 73 years of independence, agriculture has emerged as a mainstay of the economy. Despite the COVID-19 crisis, Indian agriculture is poised to grow by an estimated 3% in 2020-21. Shaktikanta Das, the governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), has acknowledged that agriculture...
According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, India faces a serious decline in employment due to the COVID-19 crisis. An estimated 122 million people lost their jobs during the first quarter of 2020. Streams of migrant workers returned to their villages — often the only fallback option...
It is not just the vagaries of nature that push the farmers toward desperate measures — apathy from the government toward the agriculture sector had undermined its fragile economy. In June 2017, holding the skulls and bones of who he claims are farmers who had committed suicide, P. Ayyakannu,...
