Shweta Saini
Shweta Saini is a consultant.
Articles By Shweta Saini
An answer to rural distress
An income transfer policy combined with direct cash transfer is the best way to help the farmer
From Plate to Plough: Maharashtra vs Market
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.
From Plate to Plough: Lean year as a foundation
NABARD’s new survey offers a baseline to double farmers’ incomes. But is a survey done in a drought year a reliable yardstick?
From Plate to Plough: Why farmers agitate
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.
From Plate to Plough: Pieces of a market
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?
From Plate to Plough: Four years of neglecting farmers
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.
From Plate to Plough: Freeing the farm
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.
From Plate To Plough: Getting realistic about farm incomes
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.
From Plate to Plough: Seize the crisis
Government has the opportunity to rein in food inflation on a sustainable basis.
From plate to plough: Seeds of change
PM Modi needs to move from slogans to action to transform agriculture.
Farm incomes: Dreaming to double
The Modi government should spell out clearly what it wants to double by 2022 — nominal or real incomes.
From Plate to Plough: With humility, on farmer income
NDA’s existing agricultural policies are ill-equipped to achieve the stated goal of doubling them in five years.
From plate to plough: A barren field
NDA government’s plans for agriculture are still to bear fruit.
From Plate to Plough: Raising farmers’ income by 2022
The picture is completed by the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (crop insurance) and e-market platform that he is going to launch on April 14.
Bad cure for a racing pulse
Scapegoating ‘hoarders’ and ‘speculators’ for the spike in dal prices might have been effective in the 1960s. But today, it is only evidence of a rather sloppy conceptual policy framework.
From plate to plough: Losing the pulses
Government’s actions on the commodity reveals it is ignorant of how a market economy is run
From Plate to Plough: Modi sarkar’s toughest test
It is agricultural reform. Without focus on agri GDP and a sectoral overhaul, ‘sabka saath, sabka vikas’ will remain a slogan
Prepare for the rainless day
A tussle is on between El Niño and the Indian Ocean Dipole. Government cannot afford to be a bystander.
If it doesn’t rain
We need a contingency plan that combines real-time technology with robust insurance and easy credit.