Repeal of agriculture laws in India aimed at deregulating
produce markets will starve its vast farm sector of much-needed private
investment and saddle the government with budget-sapping subsidies for years.
Late last year, the government headed by Prime Minister
Narendra Modi introduced three laws meant to open up agriculture markets to
companies and attract private investment, triggering India's longest-running
protest by farmers who said the reforms would allow corporations to exploit
them.
With an eye on a critical election in populous Uttar Pradesh
state early next year, Modi agreed to rescind the laws in November, hoping to
smooth relations with the powerful farm lobby which sustains nearly half the
country's 1.3 billion people and accounts for about 15% of the US$2.7 trillion
economy.
But by shelving the most ambitious overhaul in decades,
Modi's backtracking now seemingly rules out much-needed upgrades of the creaky
post-harvest supply chain to cut wastage, spur crop diversification, and boost
farmers' incomes.
"This is not good for agriculture, this is not good for
India," said Gautam Chikermane, a senior economist and vice president at
New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation.
"All incentives to shift towards a more efficient,
market-linked system (in agriculture) have been smothered."
The u-turn does allay farmers' fears of losing the minimum
price system for basic crops, which growers say guarantees India's grain
self-sufficiency.
"It appears the government realized that there's merit
in the farmers' argument that opening up the sector would make them vulnerable
to large companies, hammer commodities prices and hit farmers' income,"
said Devinder Sharma, a farm policy expert who has supported the growers'
movement.
But the grueling year-long standoff also means no political
party will attempt any similar reforms for at least a quarter-century,
Chikermane said.
And, in the absence of private investment,
"inefficiencies in the system will continue to deliver wastage and food
will continue to rot," he warned.
India ranks 101 out of 116 countries on the Global Hunger
Index, with malnutrition accounting for 68% of child deaths.
Yet it wastes around 67 million tons of food every year,
worth about US$12.25 billion - nearly five times that of most large economies -
according to various studies.
Inadequate cold-chain storage, shortages of refrigerated
trucks and insufficient food processing facilities are the main causes of
waste.
The farm laws promised to allow private traders, retailers
and food processors to buy directly from farmers, bypassing more than 7,000
government-regulated wholesale markets where middlemen's commissions and market
fees add to consumer costs.
Ending the rule that food must flow through the approved
markets would have encouraged private participation in the supply chain, giving
both Indian and global companies incentives to invest in the sector, traders
and economists said.
"The agriculture laws would have removed the biggest
impediment to large-scale purchases of farm goods by big corporations,"
said Harish Galipelli, Director at ILA Commodities India, which trades farm
goods. "And that would have encouraged corporations to bring investment to
revamp and modernize the whole food supply chain."
Galipelli's firm will now have to re-evaluate its plans.
"We have had plans to scale up our business," said
Galipelli. "We would have expanded had the laws stayed."
Other firms specializing in warehousing, food processing and
trading are also expected to review their expansion strategies, he said.
Poor post-harvest handling of produce also causes prices of
perishables to yo-yo in India. Only three months ago, farmers dumped tomatoes
on the road as prices crashed, but now consumers are paying a steep 100 rupees
(US$1.34) a kilogram.
The laws would have helped the $34 billion food processing
sector grow exponentially, according to the Confederation of Indian Industry
(CII), an industry group.
Demand for fruits and vegetables would have gone up. And
that would have cut surplus rice and wheat output, slicing bulging stocks of
the staples worth billions of dollars in state warehouses, economists said.
"Crop diversification would also have helped rein in
subsidy spending and narrow the fiscal deficit," said Sandip Das, a New
Delhi-based researcher and farm policy analyst.
Food Corporation of India (FCI), the state crop procurement
agency, racked up a record US$51.83 billion in debt by last fiscal year,
alarming policymakers and inflating the country's food subsidy bill to a record
US$70.16 billion in the year to March 2021.
However, while the federal government now has limited scope
for change, local authorities "can opt for reforms provided they have the
political will to do so," said Bidisha Ganguly, an economist at CII.
Similarly, venture capital-funded startups have also
expressed interest in India's agriculture sector.
"Agritech, if it is allowed to take root, has the
potential to enable a better handshake of farmers and consumers through their
technological platforms," Chikermane said.