Author - Samridh A Sharma
What is farmers bill ?
This bill gives a free trade chance to all the farmer and the corporate farms can get into the trade from this bill. A common man can also join the trade without any license like earlier he just need a pan card to trade. Which concludes to all the old licensed traders that they cannot have the agent system anymore.
•Agent System: Keeping an agent to bring a famer to their BID Center (BID Center is the place where different traders bid for a crop in APMC)
The main reason to bring this bill is to remove all the agents from the market so that the farmers get all the profits by themselves. In APMC’s we have a fixed licensed trader who had the permission to buy the products from framers and sell in the local markets or store in government cold storages because of which Indian government faces a huge loss every year. as the traders buy huge quantity which cannot be sold for higher prices as they are of very bad quality.
APMC: Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) Yard / Regulated Market Committees (RMC) Yard is any place in the market area managed by a Market Committee, for the purpose of regulation of marketing of notified agricultural produce and livestock in physical, electronic or other such mode.
Before this bill agents used to take commission from farmers to sell the worst quality crop for high price by giving A category quality to them. due to which big farmers get huge profits as they have various quality type of products but by giving commission and sell it for top quality price which is set by government called as MSP.
MSP: The minimum support price (MSP) is an agricultural product price set by the Government of India to purchase directly from the farmer.
This bill gives famer a free hand to sell there goods directly without entry of APMC members into it. Which helps farmer to get entire profit by themselves without giving a single rupee to agents. Which will help farmer grow and make Indian economy strong.
Now a corporate can get in touch with farmer directly and can also make contact with the farmer directly as in earlier corporate company need to contact the nearest APMC and make a third party contract. In which the farmer and the company could not deal directly they had a mediator called APMC. for Eg. BARGER KING.LTD needs to buy C-category tomatoes from a farmer named Ram means he cannot deal with him directly he needs to make a approach to nearest APMC where the members get in between Ram and BARGER KING.LTD and make a contract under contract act 1872, but after this bill BARGER KING.LTD can get in touch with ram directly and buy the tomato’s without involvement of apmc members.
Now farmers need not pay market fee or any tax on selling there product. corporates will remove APMC’s fields between them. By reaching directly to the farmers’ fields and buying product.
Now there will be a board to solve the disputes between the farmer’s - trader. The fear of farmer here is that they cannot approach civil court anymore.
Trade can be done anywhere from this bill.
The advantages of this bill:
- Farmer gets the best price.
- Government will not face huge loss by buying worst quality in huge quantity.
- Corporate enters the race which will bring the competition between the local traders and corporate.
- Corporate gets in touch with farmer directly.
- Most important advantage reducing of corruption done by agents .
- The end consumer gets the crops for low price.as the agents commission, apmc fee are removed.
- Anyone can become a trader.
Loop holes in the bill:
- There is no mention of MSP for corporate firms.
- There is no board who will help farmer to negotiate and help them to understand the contract with the farms because of which a company can mislead the farmer as the majority of farmer are not very educated to understand a contract.
- Companies can divide the areas which will lead to lack in competition between the cooperate farms .
Author's Opinion : Author is in support of this bill as this will help in many ways but if the loopholes does not get fixed then the bill is of no use. If the loopholes of the bills gets a alternative solution or gets this loop holes fixed then this bill set the precedent.
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