Agriculture’s Blind Spot
The missing variable in India’s farm economics is the slow erosion of farmers’ bodies and minds. Agriculture is usually narrated as a story of soil, seeds and rain. In policy papers and production models, land is measured in acres, fertiliser in kilograms and water in cubic metres. Labour appears, if at all, as a residual cost. What is almost never counted is the condition of the person doing the work. Yet on India’s farms, especially those growing labour-intensive crops, the health of the...
