Ashok Gulati

State’s decision to make MSP mandatory for traders will lead to chaos. The way forward is to treat farmers as businessmen and facilitate an environment in which they can flourish.

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s decision to allow cultivation of Bt cotton was transformative. Modi government must fulfill his vision by enlarging the scope of biotechnology in agriculture.

NABARD’s new survey offers a baseline to double farmers’ incomes. But is a survey done in a drought year a reliable yardstick?

Vajpayee government’s decision to introduce GM cotton made India a leader in production of the crop. Can the Modi government give a green signal to improve varieties of GM cotton and Bt brinjal and GM mustard?

Instead of fiddling with procurement prices, government must devise an income policy for farmers.

Reforms to domestic market regulations and direct benefit transfers for vulnerable sections of the population could be the win-win solution.

Only 21 per cent of India’s milk production gets processed through the organised sector and the rest passes through unorganised small players. And that’s where the crisis is most intense.

An efficient and sustainable solution for better prices really lies in ‘getting the markets right’ by overhauling the agri-marketing infrastructure and its associated laws.

A single national agriculture market, promised by the BJP in its 2014 manifesto, remains a pipe dream. Can the government reform the broken APMC structure in the last year of its term?

Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana does not inspire confidence of farmers. They have to wait for months, sometimes years to get compensation.

Government is nowhere close to fulfilling the promises made in BJP’s 2014 manifesto — profitability of cultivation has fallen and dominance of Food Corporation of India continues.

Raising agricultural exports requires the government to unburden policy of consumer bias. A balance should be struck between meeting the needs of food-insecure consumers and income-insecure farmers.

Schemes to ensure that farmers get fair returns will come a croppper unless trade and tariffs are synced with minimum support prices.

Loan waivers and increased MSP will provide temporary relief to Maharashtra farmers. The state needs to explore alternative cropping patterns, modes of irrigation.

Unless government takes bold decisions on agri-markets, reducing production costs and increasing demand, its goal to double farmers’ incomes by 2022 will remain a pipe-dream.

Operation Greens must build forward and backward linkages between farmers and markets. It can learn from Operation Flood.

Government’s claim that it has given support prices that are 50 per cent over input costs to farmers is a sleight of hand. Tall talk could increase farmer resentment

Price deficiency payment schemes in Madhya Pradesh and Haryana do not cover farmers’ losses. Telangana’s input support scheme deserves nation-wide emulation.

Doubling farmers’ income by 2022 will require the Modi government to do much better than it has done in the past four years. The present government lags behind its predecessors in agricultural growth.