The Institute of Law, Nirma University, through its Centre for Social Justice (CSJ-ILNU), conducted a one-day workshop on ‘Agrarian Crisis in India: Challenges and Way Forward’ on 1st October, 2018.
The workshop was open for students and faculty of Nirma University and there was participation from the undergraduate law students of Nirma Institute of Law, along with students from Nirma Institute of Technology, Management and Architecture. The workshop included sessions from five experts working as activists and researchers in the area of agriculture and farmer’s rights. The major themes of discussion included farmer’s distress and suicides, farmers income and indebtedness, sustainable agriculture and, forest rights and tribal agriculture.
The experts included Mr. Kiran Kumar Vissa, who is a farmers’ rights activist and member of All-India Kisaan Sangharsh Coordination Committee; Mr. Kapil Shah, Managing Director of Jatan Trust which is an organisation promoting organic farming; Mr. Rohit Parakh who is an agriculture consultant; Prof. Sukhpal Singh, professor at Centre for Management of Agriculture at IIM, Ahmedabad; and Dr. Madhusudan Bandi, faculty member at the Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Ahmedabad.
The workshop focussed on providing students with awareness regarding issues such as farmer suicides and the reasons behind the same. Moreover, a perspective of organic farming as a sustainable agriculture option and the benefits of the same over conventional practices and its relation to solving the agriculture distress problem was provided to the participants. Further, the students were also introduced to the problems with the Forest Rights Act and legislations regarding land laws. The workshop concluded with a panel discussion with all the invited experts interacting with the participants.