01
Did direct transfers change the farmer–state relationship?
PM-KISAN turned a long-debated idea—income support paid straight into bank accounts—into a routine of statecraft. Since February 2019, ₹6,000 a year has flowed in three instalments, and the 23rd instalment, in June 2026, reached 9.44 crore farmers. Few programmes have touched so many households so predictably. The question now is whether that predictability has altered what farmers expect of the state, or simply added a line to an older, more contested ledger of prices, credit and inputs.
The case for a new compact
For the first time, the state reaches the farmer directly, without mandi intermediaries, input dealers or discretionary officials standing between entitlement and receipt. Transfers are unconditional, crop-neutral and paid on a known calendar, which lets households plan around sowing, school fees and small debts. Cumulative payouts above ₹4.47 lakh crore demonstrate an administrative capacity that earlier subsidy regimes rarely achieved. The programme also built the identity, land-record and banking rails on which later interventions depend. A relationship once mediated by prices and patronage now includes a direct, verifiable line of support.
The case for continuity
₹6,000 a year is modest against the costs of cultivation, and a fixed nominal sum erodes with inflation. The design follows landholding, so tenants, sharecroppers and landless labourers—often the most distressed—are excluded by construction. Farmers’ central demands still concern remunerative prices, procurement, water and credit, where a transfer changes little. A payment is not a voice: it creates recipients rather than participants. On this reading, the underlying compact remains largely what it was, with a welcome but thin layer of cash placed on top.
What to watch. Whether transfers are indexed or extended to tenant cultivators; household evidence on investment and borrowing; and whether farmer mobilisation shifts away from price demands as income support matures.
Journey II · Building the Floor →
02
What did the farm-law episode teach about reform and trust?
In September 2020, Parliament passed three Acts intended to widen trading options beyond regulated markets, enable contract farming and relax stockholding controls. After prolonged protest, they were repealed between November and December 2021. The episode remains the period’s sharpest test of how agricultural reform is designed, sequenced and legitimised. Its lessons matter because the underlying questions—market access, private investment, price assurance—have not gone away, and any future attempt will be read against this history.
Sound ideas, flawed process
Economists of varied persuasions had long argued that farmers should be free to sell beyond regulated mandis and to contract directly with buyers. On this view, the Acts addressed real distortions but were undone by how they arrived: first as ordinances, with limited consultation of states or farmer organisations, and then passed amid procedural controversy. Agriculture is a state subject, which makes consensus a practical necessity rather than a courtesy. The lesson concerns method—sequencing, dialogue and credible safeguards—not a verdict that market reform is unworkable.
Content, not only consent
Protesting farmers did not object merely to procedure. Many read the Acts as a first step towards weakening assured procurement, exposing smallholders to buyers with far greater bargaining power and routing disputes through administrative rather than judicial channels. Where public procurement anchors incomes, the perceived risk was concrete, not abstract. From this angle, better communication would not have rescued the design; reform needed explicit price assurances and stronger protections built in from the start. The loss of trust reflected substantive fears that deserve engagement on their merits.
What to watch. Whether future reforms proceed through state-level legislation or pilots; whether consultation with farmer bodies becomes institutionalised; and whether any legal assurance on MSP enters the negotiating frame.
Journey VI · The Political Economy →
03
Can digital agriculture remain inclusive?
India is building a digital public infrastructure for agriculture. The Digital Agriculture Mission, approved in September 2024, underpins AgriStack, and 10.31 crore Farmer IDs had been generated by August 2026. Linked land records, crop surveys and identity could make credit, insurance and advisory services far easier to deliver. But the architecture is being laid across small, fragmented and often informally held plots, and the design choices made now will shape who becomes visible to the state—and who does not.
Infrastructure as equaliser
Public digital rails bring the cost of reaching a marginal farmer close to that of reaching a large one. A verified Farmer ID can replace repeated paperwork, speed the settlement of claims and let lenders assess risk using crop and land data rather than collateral alone. Open, interoperable systems allow start-ups, cooperatives and state agencies to build services on common foundations. India’s experience with digital payments suggests that population-scale platforms, built as public goods, can widen access fastest for precisely those previously outside formal systems.
The risk of legible exclusion
Digital systems reward those whose circumstances fit the database. Tenants, women cultivators and farmers with disputed or outdated land records may find that an identity keyed to titles formalises their invisibility. Connectivity, literacy and grievance redress remain uneven, and an error in an automated record can be harder to contest than a decision by a local official. Questions of data ownership, consent and commercial use are not yet settled. Without deliberate safeguards, a platform built for inclusion could concentrate advantage among those already best placed to use it.
What to watch. Coverage of tenant and women cultivators in Farmer ID registries; the incidence and resolution time of record errors; and whether data-sharing rules give farmers meaningful consent and control.
Journey IV · The Digital Turn →
04
Does MSP need to evolve?
Minimum Support Prices remain the most politically charged instrument in Indian agriculture. The 2018-19 Budget committed to setting MSP at a minimum of one-and-a-half times the cost of production from Kharif 2018, and PM-AASHA, approved in September 2018, sought to extend price support beyond the principal cereals. Yet effective procurement remains concentrated in a limited set of crops and regions. Demands for a legal guarantee now sit alongside concerns about fiscal cost, water stress and diversification.
Reform the signal, keep the floor
MSP as practised tends to reward rice and wheat, including in water-stressed regions, while pulses, oilseeds and millets receive weaker effective support. Evolving the system—through price-deficiency payments, crop-neutral income support or benchmarks differentiated by agro-ecological zone—could preserve assurance while steering production towards what soils, aquifers and diets require. A universal legal guarantee, by contrast, risks open-ended fiscal commitments and distorted markets. The aim is to keep the promise of a floor while changing the incentives it sends.
Strengthen the guarantee first
For many farmers, MSP is announced but not realised; the problem is too little effective support, not too much. Where procurement works, it has delivered a stability no alternative has yet matched, and the one-and-a-half-times benchmark gave farmers a clear yardstick for accountability. Diversification will not follow simply from withdrawing incentives on cereals; it needs equally credible assurance for other crops. On this view, extending reliable price support—through procurement, deficiency payments or legal backing—should precede any redesign.
What to watch. The share of farmers actually selling at or above MSP, crop by crop; uptake of PM-AASHA mechanisms for pulses and oilseeds; and procurement’s measured effect on groundwater and cropping choices.
Journey III · Building the Market →
05
Can FPOs solve the scale problem?
With an average operational holding of 1.08 hectares, and small and marginal farmers accounting for 86% of holdings, fragmentation is the structural fact of Indian agriculture. The scheme to form 10,000 Farmer Producer Organisations, launched in February 2020 with an outlay of ₹6,865 crore, registered its 10,000th FPO in February 2025. Formation is one milestone; viability is another. Whether these organisations can pool buying, selling and investment at scale will shape agricultural markets for years.
Collective scale is achievable
FPOs let farmers retain ownership of their land while acting together in markets. Pooled input purchases lower costs; aggregated produce attracts processors, exporters and retailers who cannot contract with thousands of individuals; and shared assets—grading, storage, cold chains—become bankable. A target-driven push has created a national base of organisations, supported by professional management and equity grants. The best-performing FPOs show what better price realisation and member returns can look like. Given time, credit and market linkages, the model offers smallholders scale without consolidation.
Formation is not function
The number registered says little about how many FPOs trade meaningfully, return value to members or survive once support ends. Many struggle with thin working capital, scarce managerial talent and weak access to credit, and some exist largely to meet targets. Collective action demands trust and governance that no scheme can manufacture. Scale in agriculture also involves land, water and infrastructure, not aggregation alone. Without deeper change in market access and finance, FPOs may remain a useful supplement rather than a structural solution.
What to watch. The share of FPOs with sustained turnover after incubation support ends; access to working-capital credit; and members’ price realisation compared with non-members in the same districts.
Journey III · Building the Market →
06
Can smallholders participate in global value chains?
India’s agricultural and allied exports exceeded US$50 billion in FY26, and horticulture output, at around 377.8 million tonnes in 2025-26, now rivals foodgrains in volume. Global buyers increasingly demand traceability, residue compliance and reliable supply. For a country in which most farmers cultivate small plots, the question is whether participation in these chains will be broad-based, or confined to a narrow band of well-capitalised producers and firms able to absorb the costs of compliance.
Integration through intermediaries
Smallholders need not meet global standards alone. Through FPOs, contract arrangements and exporter partnerships, they can gain access to certification, cold chains and premium markets that no individual farm could reach. Digital traceability lowers the cost of demonstrating compliance, and higher-value crops generate more income per hectare than staples. Experience in crops such as grapes and spices suggests that small producers can supply demanding buyers when aggregation and extension are in place. Well structured, export growth can be a route to farmer prosperity rather than a bypass around it.
Value captured elsewhere
Global value chains are governed by lead firms whose standards, contracts and price terms smallholders rarely influence. Compliance costs—residue testing, certification, traceability—fall heaviest on the smallest producers, and a rejected consignment can erase a season’s margin. Gains often accrue to processors, aggregators and exporters, while farmers carry production and price risk. Export policy that shifts abruptly in response to domestic inflation can also unsettle buyer confidence. Without countervailing institutions, integration may deepen dependence rather than distribute value.
What to watch. The share of export value sourced from FPOs and smallholders; farm-gate shares of final price in key export crops; consignment rejection rates; and the stability of export policy across price cycles.
Journey V · From Farmer to Enterprise →
07
How should India balance food security and farmer prosperity?
Foodgrain production reached a record 376.56 million tonnes in 2025-26, by advance estimate, yet agriculture still employs 43.0% of the workforce while contributing roughly 18% of nominal gross value added. That gap frames the policy dilemma on the road to 2047. Keeping food affordable for a vast population and ensuring that those who grow it prosper can pull in opposite directions—through trade controls, procurement choices and the management of prices.
Security as the first duty
For a country that remembers scarcity, a stable food supply is the precondition for everything else. Public stocks, distribution and the capacity to restrain prices protect hundreds of millions of low-income consumers, many of whom—including marginal farmers and agricultural labourers—are net buyers of food. Volatility hurts the poor first. Prudent trade and stock management is not anti-farmer; it is insurance against shocks that would harm rural and urban households alike. Farmer prosperity is better pursued through productivity, diversification and non-farm income.
Prosperity as lasting security
Food security built on suppressed farm incomes is fragile. When export curbs, stock limits or import decisions cap prices whenever they rise, farmers absorb the cost of consumer protection and lose the incentive to invest. Record output alongside a workforce share far above agriculture’s share of output signals incomes that remain too low. Durable security, on this view, depends on a prosperous, investing farm sector—backed by targeted support for vulnerable consumers rather than market-wide price management that shifts the burden onto producers.
What to watch. Farm incomes relative to food inflation; the frequency and duration of export and stock-limit interventions; and whether workers leaving agriculture move into productive, stable non-farm employment.
Journey VII · The Road to 2047 →