Market-oriented farm reforms remain a challenge yet to be met

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₹10,000 a month for every farmer aged above 60, the limit on rural job-guarantee work-days to be doubled to 200, its daily wage upped to ₹700, and the dropping of all cases against last time’s protestors. They have other asks as well, but the main one is for a law to back a minimum support price (MSP) for all commodities as a government assurance. This list, though, is not the only reason the agitators could be mistaken for employee unions asking for a better deal.

And therein lies both the irony and nub of it. To be sure, this agitation differs from last time’s in its participation and aims, but that does not obscure the need for a big-picture view of farmer discontent. Agriculture is a laggard sector at risk of stagnancy, with adverse consequences in store since it supports a big bulk of our population.

Structurally, the sector’s paradigm is one of farmers at work for the state, which lends a shoulder to their plough with subsidy support, all of it aimed at national food security. The easing of food scarcity and the emergence of our economy, however, have made space for a shift that recruits market efficiency to revive the sector’s fortunes. A market embrace would mean a greater role for price signals that emerge from the interplay of demand and supply.

In this case, it would encourage farm supplies acting in response to prices that capture de facto demand, as derived from actual diets (healthy ones, ideally, with carbs balanced by protein, fibre, etc), rather than being guided by what the state procures. No doubt, the state will have to remain a bulk buyer of foodgrain and other farm produce so long as it needs to offer free or cheap food under its legal mandate. But state buying can distort cropping patterns.