R S Deshpande Editor

R S Deshpande is presently Director of the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore, Karnataka. Professor Deshpande was a member of the Committee on Farmers’ Suicides in Karnataka, drafted the WTO Cell Report and Agricultural Policy-2006 of the Government of Karnataka. He was also the convener for preparing the manual for District Planning Team of the Planning Commission. He is member of an Expert Group on WTO and Agriculture of the Ministry of Commerce, Government of India. Among his important books are: Crops and Cultivation; NGOs and Farmers’ Movements; Moon in the Mirror; Farmer and the Minimum Support Prices in Karnataka; Rural Policy for Growth and Poverty Reduction, Glimpses of Indian Agriculture: Micro and Macro Aspects Vol. I and II and Where Water Seeps; Contract Farming and Tenancy Reforms. He was one of the three coordinators of the mega study on Farmers at the Millennium sponsored by Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India. His areas of specialisation include Agricultural Economics, Economic Policy, Land Issues, Development Economics and Applied Econometrics. Saroj Arora is a senior research officer in the Centre for Rural Studies, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie. Her areas of interest are land reforms, land administration, peasant movement, agrarian reforms, gender and land, resettlement and rehabilitation of project affected families. She has done extensive research on gender, land, resettlement and rehabilitation issues.