EVs aren’t as green as made out to be, and raw materials for making batteries are likely to run out.

This year’s Budget had four broad themes — (i) PM Gati Shakti, (ii) Inclusive Development, (iii) Productivity Enhancement & Investment, Sunrise Opportunities, Energy Transition, and Climate Action and (iv) Financing of Investments.

The enactment of three marketing farm laws 2020 has provoked serious discussion, criticism and even protest especially in Punjab and Haryana to the extent that the Supreme Court had to intervene and put them on hold for some time.

Introduced in 2013, the National Food Security Act (NFSA) brought about fundamental reforms in the public distribution system (PDS) and most importantly, declared a legal ‘right to food’.

The 2020 farm laws have been opposed by several farmers due to their possible use for corporate takeover of agriculture, removal of APMC mandis, and dilution of minimum support price and public procurement.

Possibly even more than a public health crisis, Covid-19 is an economic crisis manifested most severely in the labour market. In the face of the pandemic, the structure of the labour market typifies the extreme vulnerability of workers in India.

Public food transfer programmes act as a lifeline for many poor households that might otherwise live with constant food insecurity and the threat of hunger.

Most in-person survey activities have become unviable due to COVID-19; however, it is all the more important to continue primary data collection to guide effective policymaking for the communities impacted by the pandemic.

Agriculture in India needs to get the markets right, in the first place. Only then can the raising of farmers’ incomes to a reasonable level become a reality. Across space or over time, farmers should be able to trade freely with certainty.

In early 2020, global alarms went off as a new virus threatened to take the lives of millions, prompting numerous countries into lockdown.

Globally, COVID-19 has exposed farmers to high levels of income insecurity, underlining the importance of building resilience among male and female farmers.

Handholding domestic industries to develop domestic capacities should be a part of India’s economic strategy, not the entirety of it.

If the government can ensure that the benefits of credit facilities reach farmers in a time-bound fashion, the sector could finally leapfrog into a new regime of growth and enhanced farmer welfare.

The better approach would be to start designing policies which support “Atmanirbhar Bharat”, and invest sufficiently in becoming comparable with China in terms of benefits due to economies of scale.

The state must also combine the provision of irrigation with public procurement of rice and wheat and improved access to markets for high-value crops.

The return of migrant workers to their villages offers an opportunity to give agribusiness a leg-up

Dealing with nation-wide disruptions is nothing new to Bangladesh. Political unrest, military coups, and natural disasters in the country have time and again made global news headlines, often with sad imageries.

While rural India is poorer than its urban counterpart, in the COVID-19 crisis, it is the urban poor who are far more vulnerable with less social and government support.