Of all the cooperative bodies in the country Sahakar Bharati and IFFCO were the first to welcome the launch of e NAM- a concept of universal mandis for farmers launched from Vigyan Bhawan in Delhi on Thursday by the Prime Minister and as reported in these columns earlier.
While Sahakar Bharati patron Satish Marathe hailed it as revolutionary IFFCO MD Dr U S Awasthi called it a “must” for the benefits of farmers. Marathe inboxed an article on the issue from the Economic Times.
Awasthi’s tweet on the issue read” Congratulations to #PM @narendramodi @RadhamohanBJP for launching #eNAM. Must 4 agriculture sector. #IFFCO welcomes this step for #Farmers.”
Earlier, Radhamohan Singh said the national e-market platform will allow transparent sale transactions and price discovery of commodities.
Currently, there are more than 7,000 wholesale markets in the country. The states selected for the pilot project include Gujarat, Telangana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand and Himachal Pradesh.
“Initially 12 commodities, including chana (black gram), castor seed, paddy, wheat, maize, turmeric, onion, mustard, mahua flower, tamarind etc have been included in the list.
Experts however feel that for the e-NAM to be successful cooperatives at the grass-roots level need to be strengthened. Average yield of farmers is not enough to motivate them for mandis.
It is only through the cooperative structure at village level that the commodities would acquire a volume large enough for being traded at mandis, they underline.