Landless dalits and adivasis have occupied parts of a corporate rubber plantation at Chengara in Kerala for five years. Despite being pressurised in various ways, they have held out, sticking to their demand of land for them to pursue livelihoods. None of the agreements so far reached with the state government has been satisfactorily implemented. Yet, the issues raised by the Chengara struggle have a social and economic significance that no government can afford to ignore.

The Green Revolution was India’s first industrial agricultural revolution that replaced the traditional farming system completely. But the adverse consequences of Green Revolution in the form of stagnation in production aggravated the problems of the farmers in the era of post-Green Revolution in 1980s and 1990s. The late 1990s witnessed an emergency of debt-driven suicides and rapid indebtedness that had taken hold of the countryside across the nation.

Disagreeing with R Vijay’s “Structural Retrogression and Rise of ‘New Landlords’ in Indian Agriculture: An Empirical Exercise” (EPW, 4 February 2012), the authors argue that the explanation for declining tenancy may not hold and that the hypothesis on the emergence of “new landlords” and the importance of tenancy can be explained by the changing terms of tenancy in the country.

Following three years of negotiations, members of the co-ordinating body for global food security efforts have agreed on a new set of voluntary guidelines aimed at bringing responsible governance to large-scale land acquisitions, which have become increasingly common as a result of the 2007-2008 food crisis. The Rome-based Committee on World Food Security (CFS) announced the new guidelines on 11 May.