A bold experiment for a tough problem

There's much in favour of Telangana's Rythu Bandhu scheme but a lot that goes against it as well

For decades, an important income transfer from the (largely non-farming) rich to the (largely farming) poor in India occurred through elevated prices of farm produce. This had its side-effects: chronic high inflation, fiscal challenges, and the resultant high interest rates and periodic bouts of currency weakness. But there was no other government-administered mechanism of comparable scale where taxes paid by the rich could be transferred to the poor.

In the past few years, as persistent surpluses across most food categories have pushed down prices, this income transfer has stalled, particularly badly in crop agriculture, which accounts for 92 per cent of