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The Unmaking of the Farm Laws

This piece found a place in the Polis on
                    by Preeti Ahluwalia Productivity, sustainability & security are the key needs of Indian agriculture; a sector which has been languishing for years. Legacy problems caused by systems that have outlived their utility have created socio-economic & environmental imbalances. Multiple committee reports have been published year after year for decades, covering a variety of issues. There is no dearth of solutions – in theory. But where are the reforms?   The answer lies in the political economy of India. Wide-ranging reforms where farmers, as a key electoral constituency, will lose out on some immediate benefits, are politically hard to pursue. In addition to that, there are a few legal challenges – Agriculture in India falls under the State List, and rightly so. But this leads to a few challenges related to inter-state co-ordination as well as difficulty in creating a pan-India market.    In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, a time of extreme stress for Indians, t
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Intersection of Politics and Power: Glimpses From the Grassroots

This piece found a place in the Polis on
by Adwaith PB Beginning with an attempt to attribute a precise definition to “politics”, this article moves forward to contradict the prevalent notions of ‘the political’ being confined to the public life of an individual, the State and its institutions . Politics is not only intertwined with the day-to-day events of one’s life but also it’s present in its private sphere. The first part of this article is concluded by attributing a political dimension to the concept of Nature.  Coming to the second part, this article spotlights the aspects of power and attempts to relate it with the larger political ecosystem. Decision-making , non-decision making and ideological/radical approach to power is explained along with deriving three more approaches to power, namely, power as control over resources , control over actors and control over outcomes and events.   The entire article defines politics and approaches to power with the help of a simple issue of distributing a piece of chocolate
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