India’s farm crisis is of the middle peasant, not the chhota kisan

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has defended his government’s agricultural reform laws by invoking Chaudhary Charan Singh and pointing to the “dayaniya sthiti (sorry plight)” of marginal farmers. These below-one-hectare cultivators accounted for 51 per cent of India’s total operational holdings in 1970-71, a share that crossed 68 per cent in […]