If you think Ballari might be an exception, it is not. This is what the price table looked like in Ballari on 6 March: This included all the five major crops of that area: tur, makka, jowar, chana and bajra. The remaining seven crops were sold below what the government of India officially assures the farmers to be the minimum price that the farmers must get and the government will support the farmers to secure. Make it two out of nine, since we were told sunflower seed was also sold above the MSP but was somehow missing from the official list. Of those eight, only one – urad or black gram – was sold at or above the MSP. Eight of the 11 commodities traded on 6 March were from the list of 23 crops that enjoy MSP. Mandi officials were prompt to hand us a printout of the price at which various agricultural commodities were sold (“tendered” in the mandi parlance) by the farmers that day. Besides, there is little room for a centre-state blame game, since the same party rules at both the levels.Īlso read: Why cleaning up FCI’s books won’t resolve India’s agriculture crisis or food subsidy bill
Harvesting and crop arrivals start 2-3 weeks earlier in the state than the rest of the country. There was a good reason to begin with Karnataka. I visited this Mandi on 6 March to kick off the Samyukt Kisan Morcha’s ‘MSP Dilao’ (Get me MSP) campaign. So, this is not a bad place to test Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s grand promise: “MSP tha, hai aur rahega”. Besides, Karnataka was the first state to have its own Agricultural Price Commission. Like most states in the South, Karnataka enjoys better governance than most states in the north or the east. Its size, infrastructure, system of auction, and record-keeping is better than most other states of India, except Punjab, Haryana, and some parts of Maharashtra.
Located on prime land in the district headquarter, this mandi is no different from mandis all over Karnataka. Ballari is famous, or infamous, for many things – Ballari brothers, mining scams, the Sonia Gandhi vs Sushma Swaraj election – but its agricultural produce market is not one of them.
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