10 months on, Centre notifies panel on MSPs

The Centre on Monday notified a committee to make minimum support prices (MSP) more effective, nearly 10 months after it had given a written assurance to farm unions that had staged massive protests against a set of now-withdrawn agricultural laws. The panel will be headed by former Union agriculture secretary Sanjay Agarwal and comprise “representatives of the central and state governments, farmers, agricultural scientists and agriculture economists”, the central notification said. It added that the “subject matter” of the panel will be to look into suggestions to “make available MSPs to farmers of the country by making the system more efficient and transparent”. The committee will have three members from the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), a platform of farm unions that spearheaded an year-long agitation against three farm laws that were scrapped by the Central government last year. Secretaries from ministries of agriculture, food, cooperation and textiles will be the representatives of the Centre. Additional secretaries of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim and Odisha will represent state governments, according to the notification. “Here is the much awaited committee promised by the PM to farmers. SKM will take its call, but I find nothing promising in this committee,” SKM leader Yogendra Yadav said in a tweet. In December 2021, the Union government had proposed to set up a committee “mandated” to ensure Indian farmers get MSPs for their produce. Farmers have demanded a legislation to make support prices a legal right. An MSP is a federally fixed floor rate for farm produce to avoid a distress sale. Since the government only buys sufficiently large quantities of cereals at declared MSPs, these are not always available for commodities such as oilseeds, corn or pulses. Distress selling of farm produce and price volatility in non-cereals have been a major gripe among cultivators. The SKM later rejected the Centre’s invite to join the panel and has called for a meeting to adopt a resolution.“The committee is headed by a former agriculture secretary who had drafted the anti-farmers laws and had backed them till the end,” the SKM said in a statement.