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The bills are great in attempting to address several deficiencies through disintermediation, unified national market, negating APMC fees, electronic trading platforms, removing stocking limits, easier contract farming, lower barriers for private practices, all benefiting farmers https://twitter.com/kalyug2satyug/status/1334561628470185986
Some of the difficulties with the bills are not what the bills implement but what they do not. It is less to do with the 'perceived benefits' and more with the 'likely consequences'. Nobody knows what the future will be, but some insufficiencies can be observed in the bills.
The primary problem with APMCs these days are non-transparent price discovery mechanism because of collusion between traders and intermediaries. Trade areas outside APMCs still rely on mandi price signals; there is no mechanism for price discovery.
Next, lack of regulation and transparent recording mechanisms of transactions is troubling. The 1991 dairy deregulation attempt was a mess .Collusion investigation typically relies on transaction records which this bill does not include provisions for.
https://tinyurl.com/y38dltgu
https://tinyurl.com/y38dltgu
The Govt. provides a possibility of price information and market intelligence with the word "may" instead of "shall/will". There is no obligation for transaction recording, save for the sole delivery receipt that a farmer is entitled to.
Registration and reporting of stock holdings in warehouses are typically mandated if they are registered with Warehouse Development and Regulatory Authority. With this bill, a warehouse can deregister (as it's not mandated) and then stock holdings are not transparent anymore.
The inter-state dispute resolution mechanism is slightly unclear, given that the dispute resolution is mandated to be handled by sub-district magistrates, rather than civil courts.
These are not earth-shattering defects in the bills, just slight deficiencies that should have been handled in a more stringent and serious manner. However, the farmers' protests at the moment may not be exactly tied to all these points, or possibly to some of them.
