Speaking at the ‘Visions of Institutions in the Run-Up to India’ lecture series, Pareek questioned the conventional economic wisdom that supports a decrease in the farming workforce, suggesting that such a trend could have notable implications in the Indian context. So, when Ashwani Pareek, director of the National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute (NABI), recently stated that over 4,000 Indian farmers are leaving agriculture daily, it was seen by some as a tragedy and a crisis. But the sharper reaction should instead be: why do we still have so many Indians in farming? Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave us the phrase aapda...