People | Resources | Economy
India needs a serious national conversation on paraquat — and more broadly, on the direction Indian agriculture is taking. Paraquat is often defended as a “cheap and effective” herbicide. But cheap for whom? The price a farmer pays at the shop counter
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A reflective essay on agriculture, ecology, and the limits of our frameworks The road into the Yangtey valley in West Sikkim narrows until it stops pretending to be a road at all. On one side, a wall of rock glistens with seepage;
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In October 2024, a small farmer from Solapur district in Maharashtra flew to a Southeast Asian capital. He was not going on holiday. He was going to sell a kidney for roughly eight lakh rupees to pay off loans he could no
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A constitutional, political-economy and rural governance question. “India’s agricultural crisis is not merely ecological or economic. It is also constitutional.” I. The Paradox at the Heart of Indian Agriculture In the constitutional architecture of independent India, agriculture was placed firmly in the
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Earlier this month, when bids came back for India’s latest urea import tender, most clustered around $1,000 a tonne. One bid hit $1,136. The previous tender — just a few months earlier — had cleared at $500. The world’s largest urea importer
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A Journey Through Plasticulture Recently, while travelling through the Melukote (Melkote) region of Pandavapura Taluk in Mandya district, Karnataka, I was struck by the vast stretches of vegetable, flower, and fruit crops covered with plastic mulch. It reminded me of similar scenes
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Modern Indian agriculture faces a paradox. Calorie production has never been higher; soil health has never been lower. Soil organic carbon levels across our intensively farmed regions have fallen below 0.5% — against the 1.5–2% threshold that soil scientists consider minimally functional.
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There is a striking paradox at the heart of India’s water story. Over the past two decades, the country has invested heavily in drip irrigation, sprinkler systems, micro-irrigation networks, and precision water application technologies. Schemes like the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana
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