The politics of unsustainable farming: Future generations will pay the price for pervasive farm subsidies on water, power and fertiliser

As tempting as it is to write about the more topical question of the Aam Aadmi Party's approach to water and electricity policy, I have chosen to stay the course with this cycle of columns devoted to understanding the confluence of politics and policy in the Indian agriculture sector. Over the past few fortnights, I have sketched out how pressures from competing sets of political constituencies (consumers, farmers, middlemen and so on) and the tussle between Centre and states, have resulted in policies that have distorted our cropping patterns, created hugely inefficient supply and marketing chains, and spawned a sprawling but dysfunctional public food distribution system.

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