Noise around farm laws: Are we really reading the provision correctly?

While unregulated trade is definitely not healthy for India, a close reading of the legislation, with its accompanying provisions, seems to point towards something different

A dominant narrative of the three farm laws — particularly the one which regulates out-of-mandi transactions — is that, once fully operationalised, it will gradually lead to withering of the mandis and push farmers into the hands of big companies and agents. Also, when this happens, it would be difficult to keep track of transactions, since much of these will be outside the mandi regulations, and that would lead to hoarding, speculation and cheating of farmers.

A dominant narrative of the three farm laws — particularly the one which regulates out-of-mandi transactions — is that, once fully operationalised,