Prices of TOP crops

The article ‘The Centre must look at support prices for TOP crops’ (July 27) has hit the nail on the head by highlighting the fact that just a few months before the steep rise in tomato prices, farmers were dumping tomatoes on the roads due to lack of buyers or abysmally low prices. The news of farmers dumping crops due to adverse market conditions, whenever there was a bumper crop, has become a yearly affair. Whether it is crop failure or a bumper crop, in either case, farmers suffer. This is something that the government needs to look at closely to find solutions.

The recurring vegetable crises centre mostly around TOP (tomatoes, onions and potatoes) crops.

The Centre may establish a TOP Board to study the whole gamut of issues faced by these farmers and monitor the production and marketing facilities closely and take timely measures to ensure that farmers do not incur losses. An immediate action to be taken is the establishments of a chain of cold storage facilities in the TOP producing regions.

Kosaraju Chandramouli

Hyderabad

Small farmers’ woes

It is an open secret that small and poor farmers never benefit from crop price rises like the one being witnessed in the case of tomatoes. The government’s directive to NAFED and NCCF was a reactive measure to bring some sanity to tomato prices. If the share of consumer rupee to farmers is merely 20 per cent, then it sums up the poor state of the whole supply chain.

Nothing is worse than throwing your crop on the roads.

The government must encourage and incentivise the setting up of cold storages and food processing units in a hub and spoke kind of model so that no small farmers get a paltry amount for their crops.

Bal Govind

Noida

SEBI’s track record

This refers to ‘SEBI needs to pace its regulatory changes’ (July 27). Compared to nine decades of market regulation in the US, the SEBI, just 30 years old, has certainly done fairly well. But given the rapid globalisation of the economy and the market, the gap between its task and results deepens. Its regulatory laws have been pervasive but then tend to proliferate as amendments to cover lacunae in existing ones. And thus the ambiguity lingers on to burden its already weak record of enforcing compliance.

Despite its armoury of regulation on every aspect of capital market operations, the manipulation of stock prices ahead of key corporate manoeuvres has not been bridled. While top regulators are seen to secure justice even in innovative securities crimes, our failure to improve convictions on much lesser ones, renders the small investor vulnerable.

R Narayanan

Navi Mumbai

MPC meeting

This refers to ‘MPC to remain watchful’ (July 27). The government has ensured that the Monetary Policy Committee remains a non-controversial professional body of experts on which the RBI can bank on. The independent and unbiased functioning of the MPC was a relief for the RBI and the Finance Ministry during and after the pandemic, when the going was not smooth.

The Monetary Policy statement and the minutes of the meetings have become documents to watch, for knowing the trajectory of the RBI’s expectations from government and financial institutions, including banks. There can be no policy independent of ground realities.

MG Warrier

Mumbai

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