This week is a back to the future messenger, where our guest illustrator, Bhargavi Nagendra tells us the story of India’s fertilizer subsidy and how it might be recast to address a range of problems: ecological sustainability, climate change, farmer flourishing and so on.

India spends more than Rs. 1 lakh Crores on the fertilizer subsidy, the second highest subsidy after food. There’s broad agreement among all stakeholders, even among those with competing interests, that a change in the fertilizer subsidy policy is inevitable. However, there are diverse viewpoints and ideas on the path forward.

Any path forward will have ramifications on incomes of millions of farmers, agricultural output, the economy and government finances. Finding a solution to such a ‘wicked’ problem requires people who hold different viewpoints and analyses to go beyond debating each other, to engage in a deeper, respectful exercise of understanding each other and put their minds together to co-create a solution.

With such co-creation in mind, Bharat Krishak Samaj and Socratus Foundation for Collective Wisdom convened a small group of influential stakeholders to an intense conversation and interaction time called a “Wicked Sprint”.

This was held from the in Jaipur, Rajasthan.

If you want to learn more, this page has all the details of what we did in our Wicked Sprint in October 2020.

A long essay about how to smell a tree in eleven different ways