e-NAM a non-starter in MP as crisis-hit farmers struggle to find buyers

No price discovery yet in the state, though it has as many as 21 wholesale markets on the platform

As farmers in Madhya Pradesh struggle to find buyers for their bumper crop, an electronic National Agriculture Market (e-NAM), the Union government move that was designed to help them in that very task, is still a work in progress.

The e-NAM is envisaged as a pan-India electronic trading portal which networks the existing APMC (Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee) wholesale markets (mandis) to create a unified national market. While material flow continues to happen through mandis, the online market was aimed at reducing transaction costs and information asymmetry, enabling better price discovery.

The Prime Minister launched it amid much fanfare in April 2016,