For farmers, MSP is like salary while competing markets are variable pay

The dilemma is that if farming is to be efficient, farmers will be worse off - and if farmers are to be better off farming will be worse off

The pre-eminent British expert on Indian agriculture, Barbara Harris-White, emeritus professor at Oxford University, who is also a great friend of India, recently explained “how agricultural markets develop within the Indian context and the vulnerabilities embedded within them”.

She also said Indian agricultural markets were micro markets; that they need far more capital and technology; and that there’s a need for higher farmer incomes.

The need for more capital, technology, and incomes is well understood. But the same can’t be said of the notion of micro markets.

Not only are they not well understood, the interaction between them is not