Miscellaneous
In Episode 19 of the Transforming India podcast, co-hosts Arvind Panagariya and Pravin Krishna provide a comprehensive analysis of India's recent agricultural marketing reforms and various debates around them. They trace the origins of India's agricultural produce marketing laws back to the 19th century and describe the regime that has existed for almost 90 years. They then discuss the reform of these laws first via the 2003 APMC Model Act and then the three central government laws enacted in September 2020. They provide an in-depth explanation of the rationale for the three laws and explain the political economy of the protests against them by farmers from Pubjab and Haryana. They explain why various criticisms are either specious or misleading and conclude by exploring possible resolutions of the differences between the protesting farmers and government.