05 July, 2024The ‘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...
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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 ...
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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...
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Kunal Dasgupta Rahul Rao
- 07 February, 2023
- Articles
Transforming landholding agricultural workers into farmers
Some believe that MNREGA has negatively impacted agriculture by reducing the supply of labour available for farm work. This column refutes this view and argues that MNREGA has enabled agricultural wo...
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Ravi Kumar
- 07 January, 2015
- Articles
Financial inclusion for agricultural growth: An alternative approach
Traditional, group-based microcredit has had limited success at enabling farmers to expand the cultivation of risky but profitable cash crops. Evidence suggests that this is mainly because of its mech...
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Pushkar Maitra Sandip Mitra Dilip Mookherjee Alberto Motta Sujata Visaria
- 08 December, 2014
- Articles
Reconstructing facts in Bt cotton: Why scepticism fails
In disputes around Bt cotton, a “triumph narrative” is alleged to have emerged from researchers - mainly economists - catering to vested interests of the biotech industry, its funding and allied j...
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Ronald Herring
- 02 June, 2014
- Articles
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...
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Milind Murugkar
- 22 November, 2013
- Perspectives
Why do insecure rural property rights persist?
Poorly specified and weakly enforced property rights over land may reduce productivity in the agricultural sector. This column examines why strong private property rights are not adopted more widely, ...
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Leopoldo Fergusson
- 18 September, 2013
- Articles
The unintended child health consequences of the Green Revolution in India
While the Green Revolution in India greatly enhanced agricultural production, the enhanced use of fertilisers led to the contamination of surface and ground water. This column analyses the impact of f...
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Nidhiya Menon
- 09 September, 2013
- Articles
The role of Bt cotton in improving food security
The role of genetically modified crops in the fight against hunger remains disputed. The debate primarily focuses on whether or not these crops can contribute to sustainable increases in food producti...
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Shahzad Kouser Matin Qaim
- 24 June, 2013
- Articles
Willingness to pay for index-based crop microinsurance in India
Given the significance of the agricultural sector in India and its vulnerability, an adequate and sustainable risk management system is critical. However, uptake of microinsurance is quite low. This c...
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Janani Ramasubramanian
- 22 April, 2013
- Articles
Grain stocks: Is it a problem of storage capacity?
Foodgrains rot due to insufficient storage capacity, even as millions go to bed hungry. This column argues that increasing capacity is only a partial resolution. The crisis has happened before and wil...
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Bharat Ramaswami
- 01 April, 2013
- Articles
Agricultural wages and MNREGA: Exploring the myth
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, India’s flagship programme that guarantees 100 days of minimum wage employment to rural households, has come under attack for pushing up t...
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Kanika Mahajan
- 05 November, 2012
- Articles
Designing microfinance for agricultural growth
Credit and information constraints are particularly acute for farmers in developing countries, and can have a strong impact on their productivity.
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Pushkar Maitra Sandip Mitra Dilip Mookherjee Alberto Motta Sujata Visaria
- 31 March, 2012
- IGC Research on India
Evaluating the Performance of the Kisan Credit Card Scheme in Bihar
The Kisan Credit Card (KCC) Scheme was introduced in India in 1998-99 has since become a flagship programme providing access to short-term credit in the agricultural sector. According to the Governmen...
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Areendam Chanda
- 01 February, 2012
- IGC Research on India
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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
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
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