ANNOUNCEMENTS
In India, like any other developing country, a well-functioning agriculture market system is critical for growth and development of the country. In an agricultural marketing ecosystem, prices can incentivize production efficiently by encouraging farmers to supply markets to fulfil the demand optimally and provide the level of qualities and varieties of the produce to satisfy consumer preferences. Thus, the efficient functioning of agricultural markets is crucial for ensuring decent income for farmers thereby facilitating sustainable economic growth.
Though in the country’s governance, the State Governments play the prime role in the agriculture market organization and operation, the Central Government has been engaging with the States pressing for market reforms to deal with agriculture market inefficiencies. One such major reform initiative by the Government of India has been to promote integrated markets across space and time through the adoption of the National Agriculture Market Scheme (e-NAM) in various States. The objective of e-NAM is to promote integration of regulated Wholesale Agriculture markets in the Country through a virtual IT based market platform system facilitating market access for farmers while promoting transparent and competitive bidding for farmers’ produce for a better price discovery.
This research is the first comprehensive empirical research undertaken to study the effect of e-NAM and what affects e-NAM. A detailed micro-level study was carried out by me in the State of Rajasthan, a primarily agrarian State, which has precisely helped in understanding the impact of e-NAM on pricing and arrival at the marketplace, critical factors affecting e-NAM. Difference-in-difference estimates before and after the introduction of e-NAM in wholesale markets, for four major commodities of wheat, gram, mustard and cumin, indicate that increase in farmers’ price or volume is consistent with increased demand and supply.
In addition to this, market surveys of stakeholders of farmers, traders, commission agents and mandi secretaries were carried out through questionnaire-based method to assess the critical factors for the success of e-NAM and areas of further efficiency gain. It is observed from the survey that e-NAM potentially helps in transparent and competitive price discovery, while the ability of farmers to understand price information, quality parameters and bids in progress in e-NAM has a positive correlation with their ability to sell their produce without depending on commission agents unlike that in the physical trading system.
As e-NAM has the potential to make farmers less dependent on commission agents in terms of finding suitable buyers including from other e-NAM markets for their produce on a digital platform, Government may consider even extending other services to farmers by linking e-NAM with such services, which are currently being availed by farmers from commission agents for production process such as input, credit, technology etc. (as is evident from survey), which will ultimately help in improving productivity while reducing production cost.
Further, an ‘Expert Survey’ through ‘Likert’ scale-based questionnaire survey was carried out with various experts from different fields relating to e-NAM and agriculture marketing to draw up a three-pronged strategic framework of adoption of technology & new policy paradigm and capacity building in short-term, medium-term, and long-term for future scaling up e-NAM for successful implementation.
In Conclusion, it can be fairly stated that National Agriculture Market Scheme (e-NAM), is one of the foremost initiatives of the Government of India under the ‘Digital India’ Mission, which is potentially a game changer for the Indian economy through the digital transformation of agriculture. It can swing the balance of power in favor of vast majority of small and marginal farmers in the marketplace in India through better monetization of farmers’ produce.
