Thank you for starting this "strand".ManSingh wrote:Fresh post, not continuing a chain of posts:
As far as I know ( I can not find relevant articles at a short notice ):
1) Mandi system and it's inherent MSP mechanism work quite well currently. As a history lesson, allowing sale of commodities outside of APMC's has lowered the sale price for farmers and increased costs for farmers. Read about Bihar's experience with maize/corn.
2) The mandi system has a tax 2-8% charged by state governments called Mandi fees to be paid by farmer's which is coded into law. This was earlier used for rural infrastructure development before ABV's rural development fund. Now it is used as a revenue source for state government(s). There is no tax to be charged by new private players after this act has been passed. This puts the mandi(s) at a disadvantage even if MSP practice is maintained. This is also pointed out as a systemic way of abolishing mandi system over a longer period of time in favour of private players.
3) List of commodities under MSP mechanism varies ( i don't know how ) between state to state and market to market.
4) In my opinion, there was absolutely no reason to limit access to the court system in case of disputes. The logic/counter-logic for this has never been explained by anyone.
5) I could not find any example in the western world, where corporate entities play a role in agriculture procurement or fixing of prices. There are several "Mandi board" type agencies all across the globe. Read about Quebec Maple syrup co-operative, how milk prices and quota is rationed in Ontario/Canada. Read about CAP subsidies in europe, PLC in USA etc. I understand that private players will be responsible for crop loss in India but this is not the same as loss to farmer due to price volatility. Besides there are no numbers as to what the private players will pay and under what circumstances that I could read about.
The law may have been well intended to free farmers from the bondage to mandi(s) and middle-men. But the net outcome in my opinion may not be what was intended.
@Suraj-san: A lot of what I have said have also been gleaned from various punjabi language video(s) made by farmer representatives and brought up in various fora. This has nothing to do with opposition parties who are just playing to the gallery. In any case these have been coded to law ( very hastily ) and I do not see them being reversed.
I am hardly knowledgeable on this. It seemed to me that the intent (as you said) was to give farmers better access to market prices, which may benefit him (he still has the choice to use the mandis as I understand). I have seen articles in previous years critical of the mandi system which limited the profits a hardworking and successful farmer can make.
On the other hand...
Decades ago, the dairy farmers of Gujarat faced a corporate monopoly in selling their milk products, and the solution for that was Amul. Seems like the mandis of today are a government hijack (if I may be excused for using a loaded expression) of the Amul model, with its attendant corruption and power-grabbing, leading to dysfunctionality of the mandi system from the farmer's viewpoint At least that's the rationale that I can discern behind the law. In thinking of the case against the law, what if we end back in the days of the pre-Amul Polson's corporate monopoly on price, product quality etc.? But that's just me trying to work out (with very limited knowledge & information) trying to work out the pluses & minuses of the law.
As you said, there was no explanation, no speech by the concerned minister(as far as I am aware), the bill was just rammed through. There was no "division" vote (though for the life of me I can't see why every vote in parliament should not be a division or individual-polling type of vote, using technology to get around the delays).
I can guess why it was done like that. The opposition has become so obstreperous and so obstructive that everything would have been stalled forever, like the GST law, and the land acquisition law before that. And no one is even remotely listening to any reasonable case being made, so why bother?
And to me, a lot of the orchestrated opposition to the law seems to be from a coalition of government-type creatures who benefitted from the economic levers of the mandi system, as well as farmers who were unwilling to exchange a known devil for an unknown devil that promises to be more lucrative for them.
I noticed that the tone of the anti-farm law articles by people like Chidambaram etc. changed from "Modi is robbing farmers with this new law" to "yes the mandi system has flaws, but this is not the way to fix it". (Excluding congenital morons like Pappu that is). It may be that real farmers are not buying the narrative that having a choice between limited-but-assured-profit mandis and higher-profit open market opportunities is tantamount to robbery by Modi?
Correction, after seeing the pappu tweet: looks like even Pappu is forced to change his tune somewhat, but of course his nastiness and stupidity will remain his reliable companions.