Hindustan Times published an article on the ongoing stand-off between the Union government and protesting farmers that doesn’t appear to be letting up. Farmers, especially in Punjab and Haryana, have been protesting against the three agriculture laws enacted by the central government.
The roots of state intervention in agriculture, from government procurement to rationing and restrictions on private traders, which is what the current reforms seek to abolish, are to be found in recurring food shortages in the period after Independence. The belief now is that there is no food shortage. However, the purported food surplus seems to be the result of inadequate food consumption by the local population. Why are Indian diets poor when there is no scarcity of food? Most of them cannot afford good diets. Research Fellow Kalyani Raghunathan in Affordability of nutritious diets in India, found that 63.3% of people in rural India could not afford what the authors describe as the Cost of a Recommended Diet (CoRD). Republished in Daily Hunt and Kerala Kaumud.