Ensure farmers’ right to remunerative prices
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Farmers’ organisations are right in seeking legal backing for MSP. The price deficiency payment scheme should be implemented
Due to certain peculiarities of agriculture, farmers as producers, unlike their counterparts elsewhere, are not in a position to decide the price of what they produce. Price discovery through sheer free play of supply and demand that rarely exists elsewhere, prevails in agriculture. That, unfortunately, relegate the farmers to price ‘takers’ rather than ‘makers’, and that is the root cause of the problem.
Keeping this serious deterrent in view, the government of India has been ‘intervening’ by declaring Minimum Support Price (MSP) to put a check on ‘free market forces’ so that the prices of farm commodities are not pushed below that benchmark level.