06 November, 2025Protecting agricultural biodiversity to ensure sustainable food systems
While the Green Revolution significantly enhanced food production to meet rising consumption demand, it led to a loss of biodiversity by promoting cultivation of a small set of high-yielding varieties...
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Tulsi Lingareddy A. Amarender Reddy 
21 August, 2025
- Perspectives
Why India's plan to sell rice for ethanol undermines food and water security
In a recent policy shift with regard to India’s Ethanol Blended Petrol Programme, excess rice stocks of the Food Corporation of India are being made available for ethanol production at a reduced res...
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Akanksha Jain
- 30 June, 2025
- Perspectives
Sowing sunshine: Can agriphotovoltaics offer a path to doubling farmers’ income?
In recent years, the contribution of agriculture and allied sectors to economic output has declined, with farmers’ real incomes virtually stagnating. This article demonstrates that new ideas such as...
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Bidisha Banerjee Subhodeep Basu Soham Roy
- 16 June, 2025
- Perspectives
DRAMA at the farm gate
Describing the new ‘APMC (Agricultural Produce Market Committee) Bypass Act’ as a ‘Dual Regulation of Agricultural Marketing Act’ or DRAMA, Jean Drèze argues that the legislation's odd framew...
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Jean Drèze
- 24 December, 2020
- Perspectives
National Farmers’ Day
23 December is observed as National Farmers’ Day, to celebrate the contribution and importance of farmers to the Indian economy. This page presents selected I4I content – posted over time – on i...
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I4I Team
- 23 December, 2020
- Perspectives
Webinar video: Navigating Covid-19 impact on agriculture supply chains
In October 2020, the India Programme of the International Growth Centre (IGC) and Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI) organised a webinar on ‘Navigating the Impact of Covid-19 on the Agricul...
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Kumar Das Bijeta Mohanty
- 23 December, 2020
- Videos
Agricultural worker exits and crop fires
While the process of moving workers from low- to high-productivity sectors is considered critical for economic development, its environmental impact remains largely unexplored. This article shows that...
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Hemant Kumar Pullabhotla
- 22 December, 2020
- Articles
Farm laws: Reform needed but not at expense of small farmers
Commenting on the controversial farm laws, Kaushik Basu and Nirvikar Singh contend that the government should withdraw these laws, return to the drafting table, engage with farmers and states, and inc...
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Kaushik Basu Nirvikar Singh
- 21 December, 2020
- Perspectives
Farm laws: Resolving the deadlock
In a recent Indian Express article, Bharat Ramaswami has proposed some rather provocative suggestions on how the present crisis triggered by the farmers’ protests can be resolved. In this post, Rama...
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Ashok Kotwal Bharat Ramaswami
- 18 December, 2020
- Perspectives
Information technology adoption and productivity: Role of mobile phones in Indian agriculture
During mid to late 2000s, India expanded mobile phone coverage across rural areas and introduced free-of-charge call centre services for farmers seeking agricultural advice. This article shows that th...
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Apoorv Gupta Jacopo Ponticelli Andrea Tesei
- 09 December, 2020
- Articles
Need for 10-year, state-wise procurement plan for rice and wheat
Against the backdrop of the ongoing debate around India’s new farm legislations, Hussain and Mohapatra make a case for having a 10-year plan indicating the targetted procurement of rice and wheat fr...
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Siraj Hussain Jugal Mohapatra
- 08 December, 2020
- Perspectives
Improving farmers’ income: Learnings from a survey in Jharkhand
To work towards the central government’s goal of doubling farmers’ incomes by 2022, the state government of Jharkhand initiated the ‘Jharkhand Opportunities for Harnessing Rural Growth’ projec...
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Vinod Hariharan Jasmeet Khanuja Gurpreet Singh
- 30 November, 2020
- Notes from the Field
Crop insurance scheme 2.0: Implementation issues and weaknesses
Launched in 2016 and revamped earlier this year, the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana is Government of India’s flagship crop insurance scheme. However, it has been riddled with implementation challe...
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Ashwini Kulkarni
- 26 November, 2020
- Notes from the Field
Farm laws: First principles and the political economy of agricultural market regulation
Wrapping up the Symposium on farm laws, Mekhala Krishnamurthy and Shoumitro Chatterjee contend that regulatory reforms are an important but limited part of what must be both a more comprehensive and c...
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Shoumitro Chatterjee Mekhala Krishnamurthy
- 16 October, 2020
- Perspectives
Farm laws: Potential for positive outcomes
Siraj Hussain contends that while the farm laws may have medium- to long-term benefits for Indian agriculture, following parliamentary processes for their passage and efforts to build consensus would ...
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Siraj Hussain
- 15 October, 2020
- Perspectives
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Tweets by Ideas4IndiaMost 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 ...
- 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