Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'CM sets an example' that was published in Newsband

CM sets an example

The Maharashtra government’s decision to promulgate an ordinance to exempt farmers from having to mandatorily sell their fruit and vegetable crop in the market is a bold and laudable step. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis does not like the idea of there being middlemen between farmers and market. The problem with the present regime, under which produce has to be sold through Agricultural Produce Market Committees, is that farmers seldom benefit from price movements. The farmers should be allowed to sell their produce easily to food processing units, or even directly to consumers via e-commerce channels.

Seven States had already implemented the Centre’s June 2014 advisory to allow farmers to sell their horticultural produce anywhere instead of through APMCs. Maharashtra’s initiative is crucial. It is very important to provide full credit and appropriate price for the hard work our country's farmers have putting in for our food. This will encourage our farmers to grow more crop. They sometimes do not even receive cost which they have invested in the crop. Hard work sometimes appears useless for them owing to not getting the right price for the crop.

This is a good move by Maharashtra government. There was an urgent need for political nexus between middlemen and politicians to be broken. The   farmers have the right to sell their crops the way they want.

The problems of the farmers are: (1) Money for the produce is never given on the spot; (2) The values are decided by the "buyers' who are usually middlemen, even if Govt system is involved; (3) The inputs are under the clutches of Multinational Corporations, or the Govt dictates the availability of Water/ Power and fertilizer; (4) As 70% of the farm community are small farm units, with less than one Ha landholdings (many within these do not have even half ac), the technology and costs involved in farming are of low standard and the Government arrangements either do not reach these majority farmers or those that are available are beyond the common farmers' reach.

Unless these basic problems are solved through appropriate action-plans, monitoring and deliverance, the farm community can never have peace of mind - even in spite of supplying over 300 million food materials, all vegetables, all edible oil seeds, all fruits and many non-food items like Rubber cotton etc.

Maharashtra government has undoubtedly taken good step. Others states should also take the same initiatives irrespective of who is the ruling government. Why should farmers face political vendetta? By providing these type of facilities and even more we can reduce the food wastage beyond just providing trading platform. Our agriculture produce is getting wasted much at the primary processing level and we lose thousand crores every year.

Maharashtra BJP Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis should be praised immensely for this pro-farmers step taken by him to improve the lot of the farmers. Similar steps need to be taken in respect of grain and other produces. The Centre should also emulate this populist measure.