Report of the Commission on Farmers’ Welfare, Government of Andhra Pradesh Executive Summary Report

This is the Executive Summary Report of ‘the Commission on Farmers’ Welfare’ which was set up at the end of September 2004 by the Government of Andhra Pradesh, India, to look into the agricultural crisis in the state, manifest most glaringly in farmers’ suicides.

The Commission, which was chaired by Jayati Ghosh and had Mahendra Dev, Madhura Swaminathan, Mall Reddy, Nagaraj, Narasimha Reddy, D. Nancharaiah, K. Raju, P. Krishnaiah, as members among others and Utsa Patnaik as adviser, submitted its report on 11 December, 2004. It was the opinion of the commission that the agrarian crisis in Andhra Pradesh can be linked to a combination of wrong public polices of liberalisation and globalisation policies at the central and state government levels and failures at the level of local implementation.

It made recommendations for corrective policies in six different areas related to agriculture, namely: institutional credit; irrigation and sustainable water management; dryland farming; sustainable input use; output price stability; and rural economic diversification.

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