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
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
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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Anil Bhargava Kajal Gulati Travis J. Lybbert Nicholas Magnan David J. Spielman
- 28 April, 2015
- Articles
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...
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Shanta Gokhale
- 08 April, 2015
- 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...
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Ram Fishman Avinash Kishore David J. Spielman
- 31 March, 2015
- 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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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
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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