and R ural S ociety The policy of liberalisation that India has been following since the late 1980s have had a very significant impact on agriculture and rural society. The policy entails participation in the World Trade Organization (WTO), which aims to bring about a more free international trading system and requires the opening up of Indian markets to imports. After decades of state support and protected markets, Indian farmers have been exposed to competition from the global market. For instance, we have all seen imported fruits and other food items on the shelves of our local stores – items that were not available a few years ago because of import substitution policies.
Recently, India has also decided to import wheat, a controversial decision that reverses the earlier policy of self-reliance on food grains. And bring back bitter memories of dependency on American food grains in the early years after Independence. These are indicators of the process of globalisation of agriculture, or the incorporation of agriculture into the larger global market – a process that has