PERSPECTIVES
Farm Laws
Conflating Deregulation with
Modernisation
M S Sriram
The possibilities for extension of
the minimum support prices
to ensure a decentralised
procurement system in a diverse
range of crops are discussed. How
the architecture of this system in
partnership with the private
sector can be developed and how
this could be made market-facing
without compromising the
primary interests of the farmers is
also looked at.
M S Sriram (mssriram@pm.me) teaches at the
Centre for Public Policy, Indian Institute of
Management, Bangalore.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW MARCH 13, 2021
T
he nationwide protest by farmers
brings to the fore issues of dis-
tress and problems in agriculture.
While attempts by the state to address
the problems through the three farm
laws are being met with resistance,
and much discussion has happened on
their merits and demerits, it is impor-
tant to step back and understand the
crisis in agriculture and also look at
some significant initiatives that could
be taken to modernise the value chain,
and examine where markets and pri-
vate sector could come in, without nec-
essarily compromising farmer interests.
The state has been asking farmers to
provide a clause-by-clause objection to
the laws. But if we look at the legisla-
tions closely, it is evident that it is
impossible to provide a clause-by-clause
objection on an issue that has funda-
mental problems at the conceptual level.
The farmers are correct in asking for
the repeal of the three acts, as a repair
is not going to address the fundamental
issue at all.
The first of the three acts—the
Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce
(Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020
is about the freedom given to farmers
to sell their produce anywhere, and collo-
quially called the Agricultural Produce
Market Committee (APMC) bypass act
(Narayanan 2020). This act makes two
significant points. The first point is in
demarcating the jurisdiction of the APMC
to regulate trade and impose levies;
thereby removing a barrier for trade out-
side the APMC market yard and extend-
ing it to the whole country. The second is
in providing a rather loose definition of
a trader—being any person or entity with
a permanent account number (PAN) card
issued by the income tax department.
vol lVi no 11
The actual trade could be in any mode,
including on electronic exchanges. The
rest of the clauses were detailing of the
conceptual framing of the APMC bypass
programme.
The second act is an amendment to
the existing law—the Essential Com-
modities Act of 1955. The amendment
undertaken here is much like the removal
of Article 370, a self-destruct act that
uses its power to make itself inoperable.
The object of the amendment is short of
repeal of the original act—thereby per-
mitting free movement of commodities
with the proviso of a nuclear button to be
pressed only in extraordinary circum-
stances, defined in the amendment.
The third act, Farmers (Empowerment
and Protection) Agreement on Price
Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020,
which is on contract farming is trying to
tackle the most complicated issues. The
idea of this act is to facilitate contract
farming where even corporate entities
could enter into different types of con-
tracts with the farmer, thereby provid-
ing the farmer an access to organised
agribusiness houses directly. In turn it
also facilitates backward integration of
agribusiness entities.
Both the first and third acts also
provide for an alternative mechanism of
dispute resolution, which allows disputes
to be adjudicated by a subdivisional
magistrate (SDM) and bypasses courts
and the judicial system.
There have been serious objections to
the framework of dispute resolution rest-
ing in the administrative architecture of
the SDM. In a reconciliation offer the
state was willing to restore the primacy
of courts in dispute resolution. It was
also willing to allow state governments
to frame laws on registration of traders
and also provide a framework for regis-
tration and taxation of private markets
outside of APMC market yards; the state
also offered to provide for more safe-
guards on the contracts as far as the
third act is concerned (Pandey 2020).
However, the farmers have rejected the
offer and the stalemate continues.
If the farmers had accepted the recon-
ciliatory offer made by the state in the
37
PERSPECTIVES
case of the first law, they would have
actually got what they wanted as far as
that particular act is concerned. How-
ever, the problems are much deeper. As
scholars like Narayanan (2020) have
argued, the three laws have to be seen as
interconnected rather than independent
laws. Therefore, a patchwork amendment
would not be able to address the basic
structural problem. That is the reason
why this movement has moved beyond
the three laws, to take up another issue
of asking for a legally guaranteed mini-
mum support price (MSP). While the
state sees the issue as a fundamental
step in “reform” on the trade and
marketing side of agricultural produce,
the farmer bodies are seeing this in a
much larger context of the viability of
agriculture itself. No wonder the discus-
sion has moved much beyond just the
three farm laws and is confronting with
fundamental issues.
Viability of Agriculture
Agriculture as an enterprise is caught in
a trap of increasing input prices, without
a concomitant increase in net income.
The farm income in several households
is topped up by wage labour, remittances
and other non-farm incomes. The National
Sample Survey Office (NSSO) 70th round
report (NSSO 2014) indicates that the
average income of agricultural house-
holds across the country is around `6,426
per month, of which only `3,081 came
from cultivation. Even if we take the
highest average income in a state in India,
we find that the household income from
agriculture is not significant. We need to
note that this data is for the country as a
whole and the incomes are per month at
the household level. This is also corrobo-
rated by the sectoral contribution of
agriculture in the overall gross domestic
product (GDP) as well as the number of
households that are dependent on agri-
culture, significantly showing a lower
per capita GDP contribution in relation to
the other sectors. Part of the reason may
be because of a larger number of people
dependent on agriculture, but even then,
the absolute incomes at the household
level are evidently low.
The farmers usually do not get the up-
side of a good crop or a good price for
38
the produce essentially because the state
often intervenes in the market to ensure
that essential commodities are widely
available and inflation is kept under
control. While there might be some
crops and certain geographies that may
look lucrative, we are talking about agri-
culture in general where there are larger
public interests involved. We are looking
at commodities that affect a large num-
ber of people. It is in this context that the
issue of MSP assumes importance. It has
been argued elsewhere that a legally en-
forceable MSP is important because of
the asymmetric relation between the
producer who does not have a choice of
course correction after sowing and the
buyer who has complete information at
the time of buying. Therefore, a strong
enforceable signalling needs to be given
at the time of sowing (Sriram 2021).
This argument of how the MSP should be
calculated to ensure that the viability of
the farm units has been effectively put
forth by the National Commission on
Farmers (Swaminathan 2004).
Therefore, before we address the
issues of value chains and markets, the
floor of a viable price should be ensured.
If the markets indeed become vibrant
because of enhanced investment in value
chains, the MSP might even become a
theoretical exercise in the future. How-
ever, till such time that the markets
do not pay a lucrative price on their
own, it is absolutely essential to ensure
that the effective floor price is available
to farmers. A legally enforceable MSP
in crops where the state is interested
from the angles of food security, public
distribution, crop diversification and
inadequate development of markets is
necessary. While there is a call for
shrinking the applicability of MSP on
the grounds that it skews the procure-
ment to certain water guzzling crops in
certain geographies, the solution to that
is expansion of MSP to ensure a decen-
tralised procurement system on a diverse
range of crops. There is evidence that
the decentralised procurement system is
working (Khera et al 2020). In the rest
of the article, we will argue how this
architecture could be developed using
the partnership of the private sector
and also how this could be made market
MARCH 13, 2021
facing without compromising the primary
interests of farmers.
Modernising Market Systems
While the letter of the new laws does
not clearly indicate the intent, but it is
obvious that this arrangement will move
towards marketising the entire chain of
transactions. A weakened mandi system
(APMC) and a withdrawal of MSP will
open the trade to market forces, and
prices will find their own equilibrium
in the long run. But this would result
in significant short run distress as the
sector will see volatility before it settles
down. Assuming that marketisation of
procurement function happens, then the
state will argue for moving towards cash
transfer as a mechanism for welfare
distribution. We already have a Pradhan
Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi in place and
it is possible that we could move towards
a minimum income guarantee scheme
that replaces the public distribution system
(PDS). The Jan-Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile
(JAM) trinity that is being talked about
will possibly be pressed into action. If that
is the road map, then moving towards
providing a legal guarantee for MSP and
strengthening the procurement system
will be seen as a step backwards. If we
assume that the state is not arrogant and
stubborn with the farmers as is being
widely perceived, then this is a scholarly
argument that could be used to justify
the stubbornness of the state. However,
the concessions proposed by the state at
this point seem to indicate that it is not
so much a scholarly argument that is
driving the position of the state.
Let us engage with the question as to
why the framework of MSP and procure-
ment is superior to the income support
scheme. The MSP scheme allows the state
to intervene in the procurement market
in a targeted and calibrated way. Given
the imperative of food security and
buffer stocking it is important for the
state to be an active participant in the
process. If anything, the COVID-19 pan-
demic has shown that what helped the
rural poor in this situation was the
distribution of rations using the PDS.
The relief (unlike cash transfers) is spe-
cific and can take care of the nutritional
requirements of the poorer families. The
vol lVi no 11 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

commodity transfer in the PDS through
a fixed price also insulates the bene-
ficiaries from the volatilities of retail
prices in the market and protects them
from the effects of inflation. Given the
vulnerability of the families that need
these welfare benefits, it is best that a
more modern, technology-driven MSP and
equally modern food security architec-
ture through PDS is strengthened. This
involves investments in the technology
architecture and modernisation, but not
necessarily the withdrawal of the state
and a move towards financialisation.
It is not hard to imagine what the
farmers need as far as trading is con-
cerned. They need a minimum assured
price through a legally enforceable MSP
framework; an effective mechanism of
discovery of the best price—which can be
made available through modern methods,
including electronic markets; they need
a place where they could objectively get
their produce tested and delivered; and
they need an effective recourse mecha-
nism if there is a breakdown of any
of the above.
If we look at the architecture of
marketing of commodities, one aspect
that is to be recognised is that, in case
of agricultural commodities, there is a
physicality of delivery. Therefore, markets
have traditionally emerged as places
where weighment, quality testing, auc-
tions and price setting could be done.
Because the delivery happened in a
physical place, that also happened to be
the place of settlement of the financial
part of the deal and that was the end of
the link for the farmer producers. The
role of APMCs was important in this
context that it provided the physical fa-
cilities for trade; regulated and enforced
the contracts—particularly in settlement
of the dues. It may be argued that the
APMCs have become moribund and do
not serve the purpose any longer. But
the reasons why they existed continue
and cannot be wished away.
The physical facilities of the APMCs
were built using the levies and market
fee collected from the market partici-
pants. This is what is called user fee in a
public–private partnership (PPP) project.
How could we continue to have the MSP
and PDS architecture and still modernise
Economic & Political Weekly EPW MARCH 13, 2021
the transactions? If we were to break the
delivery-storage aspect from the sale-
financial settlement process, there could
be an alternative mechanism of trying to
discover the upside of the marketplace.
With access to modern technology and
financial instruments, this delinking
can be done
This is nothing new. The concept of
warehouse receipts has been in vogue
for a while. However, in order to provide
an active market for trading of ware-
house receipts, we also need an architec-
ture that objectively looks at the quality
of the commodity, can classify it into
broad categories and be able to process/
sell accordingly. It is possible to delink
delivery of produce, the trade, the trans-
portation and the financial settlement.
We can break the value chain to exam-
ine the relative role of the markets and
the state. In the process the priors need-
ed can also be established.
Supporting Architecture
If we were to really break this up, we
need to have an architecture for collec-
tion, drying, quality testing, categorisa-
tion and classification. Theoretically this
could be a standalone activity, but from
the perspective of logistics, it would be
best if it is integrated with the storage
facility. This activity could be completely
delinked from other aspects—sale, trans-
portation and storage. The revenue model
for such a facility would come from fees
charged for the services provided,
including storage. The question is whether
the fees charged for these facilities will
pay back the investments within a reason-
able period of time to attract the private
sector investments. Instead of allowing
the market to discover the viability aspect,
the state can proactively encourage invest-
ments both on its own, by modernising
the existing mandis, and also provide
for infrastructure subsidy or viability
gap funding.
On delivery, the warehouse issues a
warehouse receipts. The warehouse re-
ceipts is mapped to the farmers’ identity
document, which has a pre-classification
of the category (small, marginal or large
farmer). The moment the farmers gets
the warehouse receipts they lose control
over the physical stock, but have a paper
vol lVi no 11
PERSPECTIVES
equivalent to that stock which can be
traded at will on an electronic exchange. If
we were to draw a parallel to the financial
markets, this storage facility would be
similar to a depository, though the com-
plexity of storage would be of a different
magnitude. It may not be applicable to
fruits, vegetables, and other perishables
that need immediate processing. This
arrangement does not preclude spot
trading on the logic of the legacy systems.
The warehouse receipts then becomes
a tradable instrument, with the delivery
being a prior activity to settlement. This
warehouse receipts can then be used on
an interoperable electronic exchange.
Traders will have memberships on these
exchanges (to establish identity, assurance
of solvency and regulation) and trans-
actions can be traceable. This will have
to be tightly regulated to ensure that
the price does not trip below the speci-
fied limit (MSP) and also have circuit
breakers for volatility; it may include
trading in futures.
When the sale transaction is trig-
gered, the registered buyer is to trigger a
payment within a specified period. This
payment can be triggered directly into
the farmer’s account (the same account
to which Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman
Nidhi is transferred in case of small and
marginal farmers), net of dues to the
storage facility. The state can restrict its
purchases for its redistribution and buffer
stocking from just the small and marginal
farmers, effectively providing a backstop-
ping arrangement. With the delinking
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39
PERSPECTIVES
of storage from purchase, the state could
work on two independent fronts—create
a storage network through alternative in-
vestment channels, including on the PPP
mode, and procure and own commodities
from decentralised locations in storage
facilities not necessarily owned by it. The
ownership of the commodity changes
with the trade in the exchange. However,
the physical movement of the commodity
happens at the choice of the buyers at a
time when they are ready to transport it
either for further processing or for a
physical delivery in a different place.
Much of the learnings can be had
from examining the stock market which
evolved from being an opaque trading
floor based, shouting system to a modern
exchange with analytical tools, and
regulatory interventions for trading. While
there could still be many aspects on
which the securities market could evolve,
the basic trading platform does work with
adequate caveats on insider trading;
circuit breakers for volatility; monitoring
for accumulation of shares and trigger-
ing of information for suspicious trans-
actions. The ecosystem has already made
investments in electronic markets and in
e-NAM architecture and the focus may
be to develop this as a vibrant place to
trade. Do we need a 1991 moment in
agriculture? From the perspective of
deregulation, the answer is no; but from
the perspective of modernisation and
regulated participation of private sector,
yes. We should be wary of blindly moving
in that direction, while continuing to
recognise that we need big time invest-
ments in the value chain, including from
the private sector. Conflating moderni-
sation of trade, use of technology and
modern instruments with privatisation
and marketisation is problematic. The
current laws seem to solve a problem
that does not exist. They do not address
the problems staring in the face.
Limits on Storage
Associated with the concerns about the
bypass act, there is also a concern about
the amendments in the Essential Com-
modities Act, which removes all limits
on storage. As stated earlier, this should
be seen as a move towards a market-
based system. The concerns of farmers
40
are that there could be a potential of Does this liberate the consumer? Will
hoarding or stockpiling around harvest the freeing of movements help in building
time, which supresses the prices, thus up cold chains, warehouse networks and
harming the farmers. While conven- attract significant investments in the
tional economic wisdom would indicate value chain? The answers to these ques-
that this cannot hold for long, we also tions are not very clear. This legislation
have to realise that the farmers have a is applicable to “essential” commodities.
very small-time window to sell their These are critical commodities that have
commodities between a harvest and the a bearing on the day-to-day consumption
next sowing season. Therefore, a dise- of the entire population—it is difficult
quilibrium creating arbitrage opportu- to imagine a food plate that does not
nities for large buyers is always disad- contain cereals, pulses, edible oils, potato
vantageous to the farmer. This is also and onion. Since these commodities form
not in the interest of the consumer. a part of the core diet of the people at
While the amendment provides a nucle- large, the consumption is needed on a
ar button for the government to invoke daily basis and cannot be postponed.
the act in case of dire emergency, the Their availability and price stability have
threshold is so liberal that such a button to be maintained. Regulating and limit-
remains a theoretical possibility and we ing storage helps in avoiding stockpiling.
can assume that the Essential Commo- This will prevent traders from becoming
dities Act is as good as repealed in the oligopolistic, jacking up the prices when
current form. there are relative shortages or supress
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MARCH 13, 2021 vol lVi no 11 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

prices during harvest. The farmers are
rightly concerned about supressed prices
around harvests. The consumers on the
other hand should also be worried about
price hikes.
How does the act distort the market?
This goes back to the traditional ways in
which the value chains function. Usually,
storage is also associated with the owner-
ship of the stocks. Therefore, one assumes
that investment in large silos or modern
storage infrastructure needs capital and
therefore the ownership would be from
where capital is available—either the
government or the private sector. Buy-
ing large quantities of commodities also
needs deep pockets. This could be the
same firm that owns the infrastructure
or another which could procure and rent
such facilities. Both leading to greater
centralisation of storage and control.
The intent of the act is to encourage
private investments into this infrastruc-
ture and by definition, greater centrali-
sation and control outside of the gov-
ernment. It should be noted that this
storage is neither for the purposes of
buffer stocking nor public distribution
and is therefore problematic.
Is it possible to have centralised
larger storage units with decentralised
ownership? We have discussed this
earlier that through the instrument of
warehouse receipts one could have a de-
centralised ownership of stocks in the
storage. Electronic trading exchanges
can help the trading of commodities and
delivery could be delinked. However,
while moving it towards modern tech-
nologies, we also need to realise that
this ownership of the stock in the stor-
age facility is unlikely to rest with the
farmers. This is because they would
need cash for the investment in the next
cycle. And therefore—even in the decen-
tralised model—the ownership of stocks
will be with traders and speculators.
Speculation in essential commodities is
dangerous. That is the reason why we
need to respect the spirit of the Essential
Commodities Act and have a strong regu-
latory framework on the storage limits,
ownership and transparency.
While there is merit in thinking
about modern, centralised silo-based
storage facilities that avoid losses due to
Economic & Political Weekly EPW MARCH 13, 2021
handling, rodent attacks, excessive mois-
ture and so on, we cannot undermine the
importance of a robust regulatory archi-
tecture for managing stocks. Even here,
we can pick several lessons from the stock
market on issues pertaining to concen-
tration of holdings; transparency; gov-
ernance; ownership norms and listing
requirements. These principles could be
applied to the commodity markets as
well. We could treat storage facilities
as depositories; the warehouse receipts
equivalent to scrips; imposing limits and
circuit breakers on stock positions, for-
ward positions, short selling and specu-
lation. Whether the farmer would like
to play this value chain should be left to
the individual, but the policy architec-
ture should assume that the engage-
ment of the farmer ends before the vola-
tility begins. That is, the farmer gets
the MSP and its upsides. The regulatory
architecture should take care of the
viability and the primary interest of the
farmer. The rest of the volatility then
affects the consumers which needs to
be navigated carefully.
Instead of hurrying through the legis-
lation that removes limits, it is essential
to calibrate the legislation to explore
the centralised storage, decentralised
ownership model. In general, the buffer
stocking and procurement for PDS is
handled by the government. Under this
architecture, it may no longer be essen-
tial for the government to own the archi-
tecture, but creating infrastructure with
public ownership through modernising
APMCs will provide a good counterpoint
to the private sector. Even if the owner-
ship of the physical facilities is with the
private sector, the terms of engagement
between the private sector and the public
sector are to be on par. The state will
have to make much more investments
in developing the physical architecture
and regulation around it, rather than lift
the limits on storage. It is evident that
we need to tread cautiously.
Contract Farming?
The third act pertains to contract
farming. While this is an area that needs
to be examined, the experience has been
mixed till now. The current laws do not
move towards addressing the issues
vol lVi no 11
PERSPECTIVES
pertaining to contract farming and in-
stead of clarifying the conflict zones, ac-
tually add to the confusion. There is suf-
ficient scholarship around this which
talks about the nuance between contract
farming and leasing of land (Agnihotri-
Chaba 2021). Is there something sinister
in the law that the farmers need to fear?
This is very difficult to gauge at this
point in time but the insecurities about
the eventual ownership of land is some-
thing that seems to be coming out and
the laws are not very specific about it. In
addition, there is sufficient evidence at
the decentralised level where contract
farming has been practiced and the law
does not account for any of the learnings
from the past experience.
Let us understand why it is complicated
and why it is not so urgent or important
to pass the law. Traditionally Indian
agriculture has moved towards two
broad arrangements—of farmers tilling
the land as their own, or alternately
as tenant farmers or sharecroppers. In
the former the complete downside and
upside is with the farmers themselves, in
the latter they have all the downside
and only a partial upside. The anxiety
of the farmers is therefore valid that
the framing of contract farming passes a
significant downside to the farmers, while
the upside is shared. What is the benefit,
therefore, of entering into a contract—
this benefit is in terms of getting better
seeds, possibly some technical inputs and
access to modern and scientific methods
and an indicative price of the product.
The yield risks, risks of quality and other
force majeure risks are generally leaning
towards the farmer.
This means that these contracts are
between two very unequal parties—one
with access to resources, legal brains,
and technology with deep pockets and
the other with the farmer who is already
in distress. While in good years this
marriage works, in bad years one party
will be relatively worse off than the
other. So, one may ask how is it different
from status quo ante and that precisely
is the point that the farmers are trying
to make—that on the downside if there
is no difference then, what is the point
of entering into a contract of a per-
ceived limited upside? That story and
41
PERSPECTIVES
the past experiences are not looking
very convincing.
What is unsaid in the act and recog-
nised widely is that commercial scale
farming that would suit the economies
of operation of the capital-centric agri-
business corporations will not work
with the small and marginal holdings.
For someone to make investments there
needs to be a consolidation of landhold-
ings. Consolidation does not necessarily
mean transfer of title, but it would mean
breaking physical barriers and looking at
a large tract of land as one piece where
all the technological inputs could go to
make farming feasible at an economic
scale. This process of consolidation; the
offering of consolidated contracts and
the time period for which these contracts
would be drawn up for the corporation
to make significant impact on the farm,
the economics of corporate farming will
not work.
The law indicates that the firm that
takes the land on contract should not
erect any permanent structures and has
to hand over the land in the same state
as it acquired. This is difficult to measure
or implement. The sum and substance
of the third act is that the safety and
recourse clauses for small farmers have
not been thought-through. This law
needs to nuance between different types
of contracts as well as different tenors
of crops. Horticulture and vegetables
are different from cereals. Perishables
would be different from produce that
can be stored.
In any case this is best left to the local
state governments. They can calibrate
the law to suit local circumstances. The
union government can convert this into
a model law. But even as a model law,
this is badly drafted and there is a case
for the repeal of this law. The govern-
ment should look at making significant
and positive investments in agriculture,
rather than talking about enabling laws
that do not change the economics of
agriculture in any way.
False Equivalences
While a large part of the argument is
made in the backdrop of the requirements
of buffer stocking, public distribution,
food security, nutritional requirements
42
and the fact that we are dealing with
essential commodities, there is a strong
counterargument provided by scholars
about how dairying has navigated the
marketplace, and how farmer producer
organisations may provide an effective
alternative (Gulati 2021). The example
looks convincing because milk could be
considered an essential commodity and is
an integral part of the nutrition, particu-
larly as a source of protein. The dairying
is largely open to market sources, and
but for temporary distress with milk
being spilt on the roadside during the
lockdown and demonetisation, we can
see that it has been working on a fairly
stable basis. However, the important
aspect that we need to realise is that a
large part of the dairying system emerged
out of a fair amount of protection and
public investments.
While the Gujarat cooperatives were
set up as a counterpoint to the exploita-
tion by the private players, the rest of the
cooperatives across the country were
set up under the operation flood pro-
gramme funded through multilateral
aid. It took about 25 years of investment
in creating the ecosystem (milk testing
standards and testing equipment; arti-
ficial insemination; breed improvement;
veterinary aid; transportation networks;
processing facilities; and value chains on
the consumer side). Even in the famous
1991 moment, dairying continued to be
protected from open markets through
the Milk and Milk Products Order 1992.
Therefore, what we see as a vibrant
market-based competitive system today
is a result of 25 years of growth of Amul
and 25 years of replication of the model in
the community owned cooperative set-up
with all the protection that was available
from the state. So, if one is talking of
reform and baring the agricultural sector
to the open markets, we need to see if
adequate public investments have been
made to ensure that the distortions of
the market systems are taken care of.
In Conclusion
Our basic argument is that there is
a difference between modernisation,
adopting technology, making systems
transparent and building facilities that
make the value chain ecosystem work.
MARCH 13, 2021
However, conflating that modernisation
with deregulation is problematic. The steps
towards liberating agricultural markets
and deregulation could happen when
there is an adequate counterpoint to the
distortions of the market systems. That
should not hold back public investments
and structuring of private investments
in creating a value chain. The financial
solutions for the issue are different from
the regulatory interventions. There are
many ways in which the state can work
the markets, and passing these three
badly drafted laws is a blunt way of in-
tervening. Blunt instruments do not cut
well, but cause disproportionate harm.
The state would be well advised to
sharpen and heat the knives while the
butter is getting thawed.
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vol lVi no 11 EPW Economic & Political Weekly