Best of BS Opinion: Farming on the cusp of change, corporate results & more

Here's a selection of Business Standard opinion pieces for the day

With headline inflation breaching the Reserve Bank of India’s upper range, analysts are generally agreed that the central bank’s room for manoeuvre in cutting the policy rate is limited. Assessing the four-year term of the three external members of the monetary policy committee (MPC), the second edit explains here why the central bank may not cut rates in the near term. And, as Ajay Shah points out in his column, “monetary policy is pursuing the right objective but is currently ineffectual”. So, the problems that preceded the outbreak of the pandemic and continue now call for institutional reform in financial regulation of the kind that was done with monetary policy, he writes here 

Other views focus on agriculture and the performance of the corporate sector. Kanika Datta sums them up.

Indian agriculture needs a complete makeover to become lucrative for small and marginal landholders, who make up 85 per cent of India’s farmers. Surinder Sud explains how integrated agriculture can help them. Read it here

Corporate results for the April-June quarter clearly show the effect of the pandemic. Recovery would depend on how quickly it is contained and appropriate policy action, says the top edit. Read it here

QUOTE OF THE DAY

‘I don't believe we should read too much into the green shoots…. What we've been seeing is just a mechanical rebound from the depressed base of the lockdown; it will be misleading to see it as a signal of a durable recovery’

Former RBI governor D Subbarao in an interview to PTI