Unfair Minimum Support Price

Sharad Pawar, the union agriculture minister has asserted that the government fixes the minimum support price (MSP) by taking all costs into consideration as determined by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP). This is patently wrong. CACP has categorised costs into the categories A 1 , A 2 , B 1 , B 2 , C 1 , C 2 and C 3 . C 3 implies that 10% of all the costs be provided as managerial remuneration to the farmer. But, in fixing the msp, while all other costs are taken into consideration, cost C 3 is not taken into account by the government. There is no justification for this.

The biggest injustice is that while fixing the MSP the government is not prepared to give any profit to the farmer as that price includes only cost of production, and that too, not all of it. Farmers are the only producers who do not fix the price of their produce as there is no cooperative marketing structure and there are no rural godowns where they could store their produce. The time has come when agricultural trade should be reorganised on cooperative lines to free the farmer from the clutches of traders, which will also benefit the community at large.