For over two years, the state sold the mirage of wheat market deregulation. It dramatically presented the phasing out of public procurement and declared its exit from price-setting. The rhetoric was loud, the preparation was zero.
Crucially, no floor price insurance mechanism was devised. No independent, real-time price index was introduced. No meaningful credit facility was offered to farmers. No transparent off-take market was established. No storage liquidity channels were activated.
Instead, wheat market reform was used as political theatre to engineer short-term disinflation. By selling public reserves before the harvest and blocking export avenues, the state suppressed domestic wheat prices, keeping headline inflation in check by making farmers the scapegoat.
Now that the price of wheat has begun to reflect its true cost, the government, under the guise of “food security,” is reportedly moving to re-impose the Minimum Support Price (MSP).
A Failure of Governance
This is not policymaking; it is merely a stage show. The state retreated far too quickly, providing no structure or support. And now, in a display of utter mismanagement, the very same obsolete patronage structure that was declared redundant is being revived.
