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Contributor : Profile

Name Surname

Milind Murugkar

Pragati Abhiyan
milind.murugkar@gmail.com

Milind Murugkar is a policy researcher and activist associated with Pragati Abhiyan, an NGO focusing on rural development. He works to build bridges between grassroots citizen groups and farmers affected by economic and trade policies and the political system that makes the policies. His work fosters understanding of economic and trade policies at the grassroots level through press reports, workshops, and focus group discussions. He works to enhance the knowledge base of political decision-makers by sharing his research and results with actors in the political system. He is also involved in the discourse on  alternatives for the PDS in India, such as cash transfers.

He is widely published in the Marathi language press and also in Hindustan Times and Indian Express.

Posts by Milind Murugkar

Coal and the climate change debate

In the run-up to the Paris Climate Summit, there has been a growing call among advanced nations to phase out fossil fuels. In this article, Arvind Subramanian, Chief Economic Adviser, Government of I...

  • Perspectives

Protectionism under the guise of food security

India has backed out of the commitment it made at the WTO negotiations in Bali in November 2013. The implicit explanation is that the government needs to accumulate food grain stocks to provide subsid...

  • Perspectives

Bali conundrum: WTO and Indian agriculture

The outcome of the recent WTO meetings at Bali is a stopgap arrangement, which implies that the Indian government does not have to make any changes in the implementation of the new Food Security Act i...

  • Perspectives

Some reflections on the National Food Security Act

The Food Security Bill became an Act with little parliamentary opposition. Yet the public debate has lingered. Would subsidised food grains reduce malnutrition? Won’t it be better to invest in heal...

  • Perspectives

A suggestion for WTO negotiations

India’s new food security law is likely to breach WTO’s limit on farmer support. India is keen to ask for a temporary exemption from the rule so that the law can be implemented unhindered. But, i...

  • Perspectives

Do the poor need genetically modified crops?

Field trials of a few genetically modified crops were recently put on hold by the Environment Ministry. This article asserts that the decision reflects an ideological resistance to and suspicion about...

  • Perspectives

Doing a number on the Food Security Bill

In a recent article, Kotwal, Murugkar and Ramaswami pointed out errors in estimation by Surjit Bhalla that led him to assert that the Food Security Bill will increase cost of food subsidy by 336%, an...

  • Perspectives

Correct costs of the Food Security Bill

In a recent article, Surjit Bhalla has asserted that the Food Security Bill will increase costs of food grain subsidy by 336%. Correcting errors in his calculation brings this figure down to 18%. In t...

  • Perspectives

Food Bill: Neither populist nor unaffordable

Criticism of the National Food Security Bill has led to the government dropping the idea of issuing an Ordinance and instead, saying it would try to get the Bill passed in a special session of Parlia...

  • Perspectives