Destroying farm exports
Stability is not the hallmark of the Indian government’s trade policies. This is true particularly of trade in agricultural products, which is switched on or switched off frequently — often at inappropriate times. The slew of recent decisions regarding the liberalisation of exports of agricultural commodities, such as sugar, cotton, onion, milk casein and staple cereals like wheat and rice, provides ample evidence of this. Curiously, most of these decisions were taken not by the ministries concerned, but by groups of ministers (GoMs) or at a still higher level. Such an ill-conceived approach towards exports helps neither to gainfully tap the global market to fetch better prices, nor to steady domestic commodity markets.