The Prime Minister’s announcement to repeal the three farm reform laws is a crushing defeat for good policy and common sense – and a setback for agriculture itself. In a country where 85% of farmers are small or marginal, we needed time to allow farms to consolidate and give the rest of the economy time to create the jobs needed to absorb the surplus farm labor. . Now the process will be reversed, as more public resources will be spent on keeping more people on the farm.
Narendra Modi usually doesn’t back down when faced with tough political challenges, but he has this time around. Whether or not that will reduce him to a lamed duck for the remaining half of his second term remains to be seen, but there is no doubt that his political capital has shrunk.
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