Agriculture

The ‘cereal gap’: Looming issues in India’s foodgrain policy

Cereal production in India recently crossed 300 million tonnes for the first time. In this post, Drèze and Oldiges point out that a major gap has emerged between the net availability of cereals and h...

Jean Drèze Christian Oldiges
18 April, 2024

Perspectives

Watering the seeds of the rural economy: Evidence from groundwater irrigation in India

Over time, technological advancements accompanied with government energy subsidies have made groundwater the single largest source of irrigation in India. This study evaluates the impact of access to ...

Camille Boudot-Reddy André Butler
12 January, 2024

Articles

Land misallocation and industrial development

Although a large share of land in India is used for cultivation, large tracts of this are unproductive and produce low crop yields. In this post, Dasgupta and Rao explain their calculations to determi...

Kunal Dasgupta Rahul Rao
07 February, 2023

Articles

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India's farm crisis: Decades old and with deep roots

In this Perspectives piece, Prof. Himanshu argues that the crisis in Indian agriculture today is not a new one; it goes back many years. Therefore, the problems of farmers cannot be addressed by the b...

Himanshu .
12 April, 2019

Perspectives

IGC Panel Discussion: Financing growth and diversification of Bihar’s agriculture

In a panel discussion held at Patna, Bihar in December 2018, Anjan Mukherji (Jawaharlal Nehru University), Mekhala Krishnamurthy (Ashoka University), Avinash Kishore (International Food Policy Researc...

Kumar Das Manish Kumar Prasad
05 April, 2019

Videos

When technology disrupts politics: Lessons from India’s green revolution

The green revolution transformed India’s agricultural sector between 1960s and 1980s. Did this technological revolution in agriculture translate into a political revolution? This article shows that ...

Aditya Dasgupta
14 January, 2019

Articles

Groundwater depletion in India: Social losses from costly well deepening

There is widespread concern about groundwater over-extraction in India and, in turn, the long-term sustainability of irrigated agriculture. Since groundwater is a common pool resource, its overuse imp...

Susan Stratton Sayre Vis Taraz
12 December, 2018

Articles

Climate change and Indian agriculture

Indian agriculture remains vulnerable to the vagaries of weather, and the looming threat of climate change may expose this vulnerability further. This article presents findings from a study that uses ...

Siddharth Hari Parth Khare Arvind Subramanian
16 August, 2018

Articles

Contract farming and the role of government

To integrate farmers with agro-industries, the Ministry of Agriculture has released a draft Model Contract Farming Act, which seeks to create a regulatory and policy framework for contract farming. I...

Smriti Mudgal Sharma
26 February, 2018

Perspectives

How new technologies can raise farm productivity

Lele and Goswami discuss the potential of new technologies in raising farm productivity, and the challenges involved in turning the power of information and other technologies into a farmer-friendly t...

Sambuddha Goswami Uma Lele
06 December, 2017

Articles

Facilitating investment in organic food business through the right policies

The Indian government has undertaken several policy initiatives to promote organic farming and organic food exports, and many domestic and foreign companies have responded positively to these measure...

Souvik Dutta Arpita Mukherjee
25 September, 2017

Articles

Middleman margins and market structure in West Bengal potato supply chains

Potato farmers in West Bengal sell to local middlemen because they lack direct access to wholesale markets. Middleman margins are large and there is negligible pass-through from wholesale to farm-gat...

Sandip Mitra Dilip Mookherjee Sujata Visaria
22 September, 2017

Articles

Demonetisation, cattle slaughter ban, and India's cyclical agrarian crisis

In this article, Parag Waknis discusses why India’s rural economy is always on the precipice of crisis, and how the recent shocks of demonetisation and cattle slaughter ban exacerbated the crisis by...

Parag Waknis
04 August, 2017

Perspectives

Are farm loan waivers really so bad?

Recent announcements by various state governments of their intent to waive farm loans to varying extents have been strongly criticised by the media and other commentators. In this article, Dr Pronab S...

Pronab Sen
23 June, 2017

Perspectives

Hazards of farm loan waivers

In theory, debt waivers are expected to induce the optimal level of effort from the debtor for loan repayment. However, repeated waivers may distort household expectations about credit contract enfor...