Accent on Outlets

Fiddling with Cotton Marketing A Correspondent writes:
WITH the General Election drawing near, political motives predominate in Maharashtra Government's reported decision to take over cotton trade in the State from the beginning of the 1971-72 cotton season. The avowed objective is to help cotton farmers to realise better prices for kapas (unginned cotton). But who doesn't know that cotton prices have been rising sharply year after year? And this rise has been fully reflected in the prices received by farmers. Kapas prices in most assembling markets are now almost 75 per cent higher than they were in 1963-64. The comparable rise in the prices of rice and jowar (which, in Maharashtra, are already under State monopoly procurement) has been just 40 per cent. Evidently, without any State patronage, cotton growers in Maharashtra have fared better than rice and jowar farmers.