Do the new Umbrella scheme Pradhan Mantri Annadata Aay Sanrakshan Abhiyan (PM-Aasha) ensure remunerative prices to farmers for their produce? Analyse.(200 Words)
Refer-Business Standard
Enrich the answer from other sources, if the question demands.
IAS Parliament 6 years
KEY POINTS
Scheme ensures better remunerative prices to farmers
· The new Pradhan Mantri Annadata Aay Sanrakshan Abhiyan is aimed
at ensuring remunerative prices to the farmers for their produce as announced in the Union Budget for 2018.
· The procurement support scheme follows a significant increase in the MSP for Kharif crops in line with doubling farmers’ incomes by 2022.
· The hikes were aimed at offering farmers a 150% return on their input costs on each crop and input costs that include heads such as household labour. This correspondingly will increase the farmers' income.
· Private Procurement & Stockist Scheme (PDPS) will ensure the participation of private sector in the procurement of food grains; this widens the farmer's choices and the produce can be sold at the remunerative price.
Criticisms
· The whole plan was finalised just before the beginning of Kharif marketing, leaving little room for states to do the necessary preparations.
· PM-Aasha has been mandated to be executed through the existing mandis run by the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees, which are notorious for their inefficiencies and malpractices.
· The price deficiency payment scheme (modelled after the Madhya Pradesh’s Bhavantar Bhugtan Yojna) and the private procurement and stocking scheme (involving private trade in market support operations on payment of service charges), mechanisms are already in operation in some states for selected crops, resulting in duplication of resources.
· Lack of effective forward and backward linkages hinders the effectiveness of the scheme, resulting in more number of middle-men, remunerative prices don't reach farmers.
