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

  • Perspectives

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...

  • 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 ...

  • 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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The Effects of Food Policy on Cropping Patterns and Income Distribution in Rural Bihar

Bihar is unusual among the Indian states in the extent to which it remains a rural economy; government food policy can have profound effects on the level and distribution of income in Bihar. The objec...

  • IGC Research on India

How agricultural debt waiver impacts beneficiary households

How a large-scale and unanticipated debt-relief programme impacts beneficiary households is a question that has not been clearly answered by the existing literature. This column analyses the impact of...

  • Articles

Unified agricultural markets: Where are the reforms lacking?

In April 2016, Modi government launched the e-National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) platform – a pan-India electronic marketplace for trading of agricultural commodities. However, rather than ushering...

  • Articles

Indian agriculture: How to feed more people with fewer resources

While agriculture in India has achieved grain self-sufficiency, it has become cereal-centric, regionally-biased and resource-intensive. In this article, Swain, Price and Sharma discuss the rising res...

  • Perspectives

The crisis of farmer suicides

More than 15,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide per year, on average, in the last two decades – a suicide rate that appears to be higher than that of the general population. In this article,...

  • Perspectives

Moving past the mandis: A revolution waiting to happen

A revolution in agricultural marketing organisation in Gansu province in China led to a 50% increase in potato yields within the past 15 years. In this article, Dilip Mookherjee, Professor of Economi...

  • Perspectives

Transforming Indian agriculture: The role of credit policy

Despite various policy attempts at priority sector lending to poor farmers, very little progress has been made on the ground, suggesting problems in the design and implementation of these policies. I...

  • Perspectives

Using science to improve Indian agriculture

Five years ago, the Indian government imposed a ‘temporary’ moratorium on the commercial release of Bt brinjal – a genetically modified crop - even after it had passed through the due regulator...

  • Perspectives

Promoting the use of a novel water-saving agricultural technology among Indian farmers

The Met Department has forecasted a below-normal monsoon in India this year. This column analyses the demand for a water-saving agricultural technology — laser land levelling — among farmers in U...

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Bovine Economics

About a month ago, the state government of Maharashtra instituted a ban on the slaughter of bulls and bullocks, in addition to the existing ban on the slaughter of cows. In this article, Shanta Gokha...

  • Perspectives

Adoption of Balanced Use of Chemical Fertilisers: Farmer's Response to Scientific Evidence and Social Learning

Government of India has launched a massive program of individualized soil tests and customized fertilizer recommendation, with the hope that scientific information will lead farmers to optimize the fe...

  • IGC Research on India

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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Recent Contributors

Jean

Jean Drèze

Ranchi University; Delhi School of Economics

Christian

Christian Oldiges

UN ESCWA

Anjali V. Raj, Seema Purushothaman,

Anjali V. Raj, Seema Purushothaman, Vidya Puttur Sadashiva

Azim Premji University

Camille

Camille Boudot-Reddy

Birkbeck, University of London

André

André Butler

University of Cambridge

Manaswini

Manaswini Rao

University of Delaware

Elisabeth

Elisabeth Sadoulet

University of California, Berkeley

Alain

Alain de Janvry

University of California, Berkeley

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Most Popular Agriculture Posts

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 ...

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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...

  • 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...

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