Our institutional, academic and administrative functioning is geared towards enabling, supporting and encouraging our faculty members to undertake rigorous, transdisciplinary, and collaborative research. Over the past six years, JGU’s faculty members have collectively produced over 800 publications. These include research papers and articles published in national and international journals, edited and authored books, book chapters and several research reports, many of which have been in some of the world’s most prestigious journals and publishing houses.
2014 |
Sarkar, Swagato Contract farming and McKinsey's plan for transforming Agriculture into Agribusiness in West Bengal Journal Article 2014. Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Tags: Agrarian Crisis, Agribusiness, Contract Farming, Global Agriculture @article{Sarkar2014, title = {Contract farming and McKinsey's plan for transforming Agriculture into Agribusiness in West Bengal}, author = {Swagato Sarkar}, url = {https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Swagato_Sarkar2/publication/275644478_Contract_Farming_and_McKinsey%27s_Plan_for_Transforming_Agriculture_into_Agribusiness_in_West_Bengal/links/5541cf7f0cf2718618dcb9fa/Contract-Farming-and-McKinseys-Plan-for-Transforming-Agriculture-into-Agribusiness-in-West-Bengal.pdf https://doi.org/10.1177/0973174114549100 http://hdl.handle.net/10739/919}, year = {2014}, date = {2014-12-31}, abstract = {Agriculture has been the target of modernization for a long time. The earlier interventions of deploying ‘green revolution’ technologies were a statist project and aimed at increasing productivity. The focus of public policy has shifted from increasing productivity to finding and servicing consumer markets. It is in this context that contract farming and linkages with formal retail sector have been proposed. The erstwhile Left Front government in West Bengal, India, had drafted the management consultancy firm McKinsey & Company to strategize a rejuvenation plan for the state’s agriculture. McKinsey suggested that the government should encourage farmers to enter into contract farming, which would allow them to access market, especially international and domestic metropolitan markets. The documents produced by McKinsey were confidential, but have recently been leaked. In this article, I analyze these confidential documents and the proposal to transform agriculture into agribusiness. I try to locate such a proposal at the global level to understand the dynamics of (global) agribusiness and why global agri-capital advocates contract farming. Thereafter, I try to critically evaluate the prospect of contract farming in Bengal and India.}, keywords = {Agrarian Crisis, Agribusiness, Contract Farming, Global Agriculture}, pubstate = {published}, tppubtype = {article} } Agriculture has been the target of modernization for a long time. The earlier interventions of deploying ‘green revolution’ technologies were a statist project and aimed at increasing productivity. The focus of public policy has shifted from increasing productivity to finding and servicing consumer markets. It is in this context that contract farming and linkages with formal retail sector have been proposed. The erstwhile Left Front government in West Bengal, India, had drafted the management consultancy firm McKinsey & Company to strategize a rejuvenation plan for the state’s agriculture. McKinsey suggested that the government should encourage farmers to enter into contract farming, which would allow them to access market, especially international and domestic metropolitan markets. The documents produced by McKinsey were confidential, but have recently been leaked. In this article, I analyze these confidential documents and the proposal to transform agriculture into agribusiness. I try to locate such a proposal at the global level to understand the dynamics of (global) agribusiness and why global agri-capital advocates contract farming. Thereafter, I try to critically evaluate the prospect of contract farming in Bengal and India. |