Exploring Governance Problems in Implementation of Minimum Support Price Policy

Author(s): Babasaheb Mundhe

Abstract:

The Minimum Support Price policy enjoys wider appeal among the farmers community. The Government of India sets Minimum Support Prices for 24 crops annually with the intent of ensuring farmers receive a minimum price for their marketable produce, and providing a safety net for farmers making farming a more stable and economically viable enterprise. However, the implementation of the policy is often punctuated by farmers’ protests demanding the designated minimum prices and legal guarantee. The policy implementation suffers from multiple set of problems, which do not get the expected attention. Though extant research has excessively focused on examining the intrinsic problems of the support price policy, it contributed to mostly neglecting the governance issues afflicting the policy. The critical analysis of support price policy implementation revealed that the policy is suffering from several governance problems such as red-tape, corruption, lack of awareness about procurement centres among small and marginal farmers, and so on. The understanding of these issues would go a long way in enhancing the effectiveness of the minimum support price policy in India.

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Pages: 170-174     |    3 View     |    0 Download