Changing Dynamics in Indian Agricultural Markets

This is the first of a four part series where Professor Abhijit Sen, former member of the Planning Commission, talks about the evolution of agricultural market reforms in India. He situates agricultural markets within the context of the agrarian crisis and provides a broad history of the policy shifts that have taken place to counter it. He links the approaches to agricultural markets in India, within the global neoliberal economic trend since the 1990s. The recent shifts in policies have taken place on two counts, firstly, to move agricultural marketing from the states to the Centre and secondly, to repeal the Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMC) Acts in favour of greater deregulation.