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The seventh seminar of the FAS Young Scholars’ Online Seminar Series 2024-25 will be presented by Vani Swarupa Murali, Instructor, South Asian Studies Programme, National University of Singapore, on Friday, March 28, 2025, at 4 PM IST. Vani’s study examines the structural and institutional challenges in the decentralisation of agricultural policy in Tamil Nadu, situating it in the context of climate change. It explores how bureaucratic fragmentation, administrative burdens, and competing jurisdictions hinder policy implementation and how these barriers shape farmers’ reluctance to engage with existing government policies. By highlighting disparities in access and adoption, particularly in groundwater conservation schemes, the study sheds light on the growing agrarian inequality and the uneven capacity of farmers to adapt to climate challenges. Drawing on a century of administrative reports tracing the history of decentralisation in Tamil Nadu, alongside interviews conducted with farmers between 2022 and 2023, the research interrogates the structural and institutional dynamics shaping these choices. The discussant for this session is Dr. Gopinath R., Principal Scientist, M S Swaminathan Research Foundation. The series is chaired by Barbara Harriss-White, Emeritus Professor of Development Studies, the University of Oxford.