View: If wishes were gardens, Indian farms would bloom

If good intentions could a paradise make, rural India would become a land of milk and honey after the announcement of the third instalment of the Covid stimulus. It comprises eight items of expenditure and three big policy changes. The policy changes are more significant than the spending proposals. Even more significant would have been a needed policy change in the power sector, to end theft and giveaways, to provide rural India with stable power supply during the day, so that some agro-processing industry can come up on the ground, and not just in the policymaker’s dreams.

Agriculture is a state subject, so changing the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee Act to give farmer marketing freedom is outside the Centre’s remit. However, using the power of the Centre to legislate on inter-state trade, the Centre proposes to free up inter-state commerce for farmers, particularly via electronic marketplaces. Combined with adequate storage, preferably climate-controlled, warehouse receipts that are negotiable instruments and access to formal credit, farmers can be saved from distress sales to APMC traders, who also serve as money lenders. Amending the Essential Commodities Act is most welcome, as the shortage-era law now only serves to curb the growth of private trade in farm produce. A law to let farmers hedge against price uncertainty can only mean a law to protect commodity futures from arbitrary bans by the government itself and to protect the farmers’ right to be insulated from arbitrary export bans by the Centre at the first whiff of a food price hike.

The assorted schemes in crop- and animal-husbandry and fisheries address the right concerns. Let us hope that the right intent shows up in implantation of the schemes in the days ahead.