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Notice (8): Undefined variable: urlPrefix [APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8]latest-news-updates/is-this-the-market-reform-indian-agriculture-needs-sudha-narayanan.html"/> LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Is This the Market Reform Indian Agriculture Needs? -Sudha Narayanan | Im4change.org
Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Is This the Market Reform Indian Agriculture Needs? -Sudha Narayanan

-TheIndiaForum.in

The rules of the game in markets have changed dramatically. But there are problems with the fundamental premise of the approach, there are doubts about the future of state intervention & there are major lacunae in the bills, all making the outcome uncertain.

On 5 June 2020, amidst growing concern over the seismic collapse of the economy and the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Government of India promulgated three ordinances relating to agricultural marketing that represented a fundamental reorientation of the existing regulatory framework. In doing so, the central government demonstrated its willingness to use the Covid-19 crisis and the ordinance route to unilaterally push through reforms, without the explicit involvement of the state governments.

By September 14, 2020, these ordinances had been brought to Parliament as legislative bills for “discussion”, approval and have since been passed. The proceedings in Parliament have regrettably been vastly inadequate in highlighting the potential ramifications of the bills and in redressing their many lacunae. Nor did the government use the parliamentary discussion as an opportunity to reveal and clarify its larger vision for Indian agriculture that these bills foregrounded. On 27 September, the bills received presidential assent and were notified in the gazette.

One bill relaxes restrictions governing purchase and sale of farm produce, the second relaxes restrictions on stocking under the Essential Commodities Act (ECA), 1955, and the third introduces a dedicated legislation to enable contract farming based on written agreements.

The three bills need to be read together. They share a premise that they will enable private players to invest in agri-food supply chains more easily, lead to gains in efficiency downstream along the supply chain (and upstream in the input supply chain) and that these gains will be passed on to farmers in the form of higher output prices or lower input prices as the case may be.

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