Private markets for agro-produce

BS OPINION

 These laws were enacted primarily to protect farmers from the supposedly rapacious tendencies of village-level traders, in the absence of organised marketing alternatives. But, in reality, these statutes have only resulted in promoting what they were supposed to curb.

 For they merely paved the way for the evolution of a monopolistic, though regulated, agricultural produce marketing system. Inefficiency is not the only malaise these regulated markets suffer from, for they have bred several malpractices, such as belated payments and non-issuance of sale slips by the licensed traders.

 Besides, these markets are generally congested, leading to long waiting periods, and lack basic facilities like pucca floors for stacking the produce and arrangements for cleaning, grading and packaging. Moreover, these laws have failed to break the traditional inter-locking of marketing and credit through ahrtiyas or commission agents.

 This apart, these laws have prevented the marketing infrastructure from growing at the same pace as the growth of the marketable surplus. There are barely 7,000 regulated markets in the entire country