10 February, 2025The agricultural productivity gap: Informality matters
There are various explanations in the literature for the observed productivity gap between agriculture and other sectors, in developing countries. Using Indian data, this article questions the standar...
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Rajveer Jat Bharat Ramaswami 
20 November, 2024
- Articles
100 million tonnes of cereals are missing… every year
In an earlier I4I post, Drèze and Oldiges drew attention to India’s ‘cereal gap’ – a large difference between net availability of cereals and household consumption. In this post, they use rec...
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Jean Drèze Christian Oldiges
- 05 July, 2024
- Perspectives
Exploring urban perceptions around freshness of vegetables
With urban Indians increasingly seeking healthy lifestyles, the demand for fresh produce has escalated. In this note, Raj, Purushothaman and Sadashiva discuss findings from their survey in Bengaluru, ...
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Anjali V. Raj, Seema Purushothaman, Vidya Puttur Sadashiva
- 27 February, 2024
- Notes from the Field
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...
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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...
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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...
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Tanika Chakraborty Aarti Gupta
- 23 May, 2017
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Analysing the impact of government interventions in agriculture on consumption
In the context of bankruptcy, many important studies have examined the implications of debt relief on different real outcomes. However, the decision to file for bankruptcy could be endogenous; exami...
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Mrinal Mishra Prasanna Tantri Nagaraju Thota
- 31 March, 2017
- IGC Research on India
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...
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Rajnish Kumar Rohini Somanathan
- 15 March, 2017
- 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...
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Mrinal Mishra
- 02 February, 2017
- 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...
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Nidhi Aggarwal Sargam Jain Sudha Narayanan
- 02 January, 2017
- 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...
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Gareth Price Ira Sharma Ashwini K. Swain
- 05 July, 2016
- 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,...
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Maitreesh Ghatak
- 04 May, 2016
- 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...
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Dilip Mookherjee
- 20 January, 2016
- 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...
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Amartya Lahiri Dilip Mookherjee
- 14 December, 2015
- 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...
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Robert S. Zeigler
- 26 June, 2015
- Perspectives
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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