‘Agriculture, irrigation and rural development’ is one of the three constituents of Aspirational India theme of the Union Budget 2020. The government’s resolve to double farmers’ incomes by 2022 has been emphatically underscored and 16 measures to boot up agriculture have been outlined. These measures range from encouraging states to carry out agriculture marketing reforms, the Model Contract Farming Act, 2018 to making Indian farmers producers of solar power, to build efficient value chains for perishable commodities and significantly increasing processing capacity for milk, to name a few. While these are steps in the right direction, are these enough to double farmers’ incomes by 2022?

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