January 23, 2026
In his Hindustan Times column, Vital Signs, OHT’s Dr. Ramanan Laxminarayan writes that India’s agricultural subsidy system, once crucial for preventing hunger, now needs urgent reform to address today’s health and climate challenges.
India spends over US$50 billion (about 4 trillion INR) each year on agricultural subsidies, most of it supporting rice, wheat, and sugar. While this approach helped ensure food security in the past, the country now faces a different reality, including ongoing undernutrition, rapidly rising obesity and diabetes, and growing risks from climate change. Subsidies that favor cereals crowd out healthier foods such as pulses, millets, fruits, vegetables, milk, and eggs. Continued support for sugar, despite strong links to diet-related disease, poses a major public health contradiction.
The environmental costs are also severe. Water-intensive crops are grown in unsuitable regions, accelerating groundwater depletion and soil damage.
Dr. Laxminarayan calls for shifting subsidies away from specific crops toward farmer incomes, nutrition, and climate resilience, helping farmers, improving diets, and protecting natural resources without increasing public spending.
“India can either purposively rethink its agricultural subsidy system in the move towards Viksit Bharat (the goal to transform India into a developed nation) or this choice will be forced by a climate crisis in the coming years. The same subsidy resources, spent differently, could benefit farmers; restore land, water and air; and improve health — without spending a single additional rupee (INR).”
Read it here.
