The State, Market and Agrarian Crisis: Political Economy of Agricultural Price in India
摘要
Protests of farmers earlier against proposed farm laws and later demanding the statutory status of Minimum Support Prices (M.S.P.) primarily reflect farmers’ lack of trust in market-determined prices as sellers. Despite the provision of M.S.P. for various crops by the central government at the pan-India level, the absence of any statutory procurement guarantees, the final price realised by farmers in general, small and marginal farmers and farmers belonging to socially deprived caste groups, in particular, is subject to an interplay between the socio-economic status of farmers at an individual level and the larger political-economic environment at the macro level. In this context, the paper examines the extent to which the prices realised by farmers differ across states and a possible explanation of the factors responsible for such differentials. The paper investigates to what extent the status of public procurement of agricultural produce and land redistribution affects the bargaining power of the farmers belonging to lower social and economic ladders, concerning the realisation of the price of agricultural produce across states. The paper will draw its analysis on the unit-level data of the National Sample Survey Organisation 77th round (2018–19) dealing with the situation assessment of farmers.