Sowing a concept

-The Hindu Business Line

Implementing a national agricultural market is about more than just setting aside minor funds in the Budget

Finance minister Arun Jaitley announced in the Budget that the coverage of the National Agricultural Market (e-NAM) would be extended from 250 mandis (markets) to 585 across the country. This is just a reiteration of what was planned when the e-NAM was launched, in April 2016. Jaitley has also sanctioned Rs. 75 lakh to each mandi to set up facilities for cleaning, grading and packaging of produce. The funds are welcome especially because assaying of produce is an important aspect of the e-NAM concept itself. The plan of a single national agricultural market based on an electronic platform is an excellent one, but implementing it may not be so easy as the experience of the last nine months has shown.

e-NAM was to help farmers find the best possible price for their produce by expanding the market nationally and eliminating middlemen. The idea was to enable a farmer from, say, Guntur in Andhra Pradesh sell his chillies via e-NAM to the highest bidder, who could be in far away Rajasthan. The critical link, of course, was creating an electronic payment system that would allow the buyer credit the proceeds directly into the farmer’s bank account. But this has not taken off, and farmers continue to be paid in cash. So, the e-NAM system has turned out to be nothing more than an exercise in computerisation of the mandi records and replacement of the open outcry system of auction by an electronic one. Even in the 250 mandis where e-NAM has been introduced in the last few months, the farmer still sells only locally, and not nationally. The little procurement that happens nationally is by central agencies implementing the minimum support price programme.

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