Plantix and Jevons' Paradox Revisited

Can crop advisory startups fulfil their promise to reduce the inputs required for farming in India?

In 1865, William Stanley Jevons, a twenty-nine-year-old English economist, published the book, “The Coal Question”, when Great Britain was in the apogee of its military and industrial powers.

Fearing that the party might soon be over, with the country rapidly losing its coal resources, Jevons argued that James Watt's improved steam engine design, which …