BJP-led government at Centre seeking to appease consumers, farmers and traders

NEW DELHI: The government appears to be in a fix as it goes about taming the increasing food inflation that hurts its middle class vote-bank, but the harsh measures like amending the Agriculture Produce Market Committees (APMC) Act would affect its key support base of traders.

As prices of fruit and vegetables soared in the past week, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley held an emergency meeting and announced some measures, including an advice to states to delist fruit and vegetables from APMC. While this would help farmers as well as consumers, traders and middlemen who used to buy the produce from farmers and sell in the market would also be affected.

Under the APMC Act, farmers can sell their produce only to traders and middlemen. This leaves them at the mercy of traders and middlemen who play with the prices of essential commodities and form cartels at mandis to fix prices.

An amendment to the Act, which delists fruit and vegetables, would allow farmers to sell their produce directly to retailers and consumers. This should lead to a fall in prices of these products.

Other than manipulating prices, the middlemen also hoard vegetables and indulge in black-marketing.

However, doing away with APMC would take away the source of income of lakhs of traders and middlemen who have been loyal supporters of BJP since its inception.

Though a section of BJP is wary of this announcement, it’s hopeful that a middle path would be found to benefit both the consumers and traders. "Government has only said states can buy outside APMC as well. However, when the state governments go about doing so they cannot completely set aside APMC," a BJP Rajya Sabha MP said.


Experts, however, feel the government should go ahead with the changes.

"It all depends on how the government handles it. The prime minister has been talking about tough measures.

He should go ahead and expose such traders. There is a big difference between the price of a vegetable at a mandi and say in a market in Munirka, South Delhi. This government has the numbers to do and it should help consumers and farmers," Prof Sudha Pai of the Centre for Political Studies in JNU told ET.

The UPA government had also mulled over taking these measures, but it did not go ahead fearing a political backlash.