The COVID-19 lockdown has given our political class a remarkable opportunity to push wide-ranging reforms to boost productivity and growth.

One such area for reform has been in agriculture. The APMC reform measures taken by @ChouhanShivraj govt. are very significant. 1/
'Formally' decoupling the need to approach APMCs to sell produce will go a long way in ushering legitimate competition in the market for higher quality produce (like the superior MP wheat), which is otherwise sold at sub-optimal price in the existing gamed system. 2/
Add to this the removal of command-and-control ideas like "notified market areas" to pave way for consolidation of the already notified market, expansion of the definition of "mandi", the renewed push for e-NAM, etc., and you get a solid package worth applauding. 3/
It takes immense political capital to bring about any reform in the agricultural sector, especially those dealing with APMCs. Most APMCs are controlled by local politicians and their affiliated traders who have no intention to lose their grip over the activities of the APMCs. 5/
MP has shown the way, and it is my sincere hope that other states would follow. The time for piecemeal reforms is long past.

Another important reform plan is the Swamitva Yojana that PM Modi announced of the Panchayati Raj Day. 6/
Land ownership mess in India is a historical problem and there is just way too many complication to even try to unravel the cobwebs delicately. Trying to solve this issue, both locally and at the policy level, is a zero-sum game politically, with no easy solutions. 7/
Subsequent govts -both at States and the Center- have accumulated stacks of reports on how to tackle this issue, yet there has hardly been any movement. In states like Bihar, where this issue has serious political baggage (land grab movement, zamindari, etc.), even more so. 8/
I don't want to get started on issues with maintaining land records in India. The point is that our current inefficiencies have pretty much ensured that farmers do not derive the maximum value they can from their land, especially when it comes to raising capital through mortgage.
Swaitva Yojana, if scaled rapidly, could help in cleaning up land records, and creating a digital repository of land ownership records mapped to co-ordinates. The potential of such an exercise in immense, both from a legal perspective as well as an economic perspective. 10/
Not to forget Devendra Fadnavis had also planned a move along the same lines, with MoUs signed before the election. However, I am not sure if (at all) there has been any movement under the current MVA govt.

Nonetheless, the pilot of Swamitva Yojna will be watched closely. 11/
Let me be clear, there WILL be hurdles, and there will be a lot of hullabaloo on the specifics of the project. But as long as a fair dispute resolution mechanism is put in place for local level negotiation and speedy disposal of boundary issues, this project will be welcomed. 12/
Going forward, I wish COVID-19 related shock in agricultural supply chains pushes the state as well as central govt to renew their focus on improving the accessibility to cold storage/transportation options. Today <10% of Indian agri produce passes through cold supply chain. 13/
The impact of COVID-19 related disruptions has been felt disproportionately by small and marginal farmers who allocate a larger share of their arable land to high value crops like local fruits, fungi, and (green) vegetables -all perishable items. 14/
Retailers prioritized items with longer shelf life earlier in the lock-down. With the limited cold storage option largely taken up by grains, potatoes, apples and few other fruits grown by larger farmers, large quantity of perishable produce has been wasted due to high costs. 15/
The impact of this can be seen a few months down the line when food inflation goes up, but for now, this should serve as a wake-up call to our policymakers to think about ways in which cold supply chain can be further scaled and made easily accessible to smaller farmers. 16/
There are baffling market failures built into our agri ecosystem. At the heart of policy non-action is our incapability to stop romanticizing rural poverty for the sake of superficial activism and emotive politics.

I only hope that this crisis spurs more reform in this sector.
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