Bihar Agricultural Produce Market Committee: Origin and Growth

Abstract

The adoption of scientific technology in the field of agricultural production by the farmers has created a great demand for better and improved inputs in greater quantity. The investment in new technology largely depends upon the gains of the farming community. It has, therefore become imperative that arrangements should exist for efficient movement of the farmers produce to the consumers and for adequate and timely supply of superior inputs to the farmers. In this transitional stage, state regulation of marketing becomes an essential part of the state policy for improving the agricultural marketing system.

The state regulation of the marketing system was developed in India in the beginning of the twentieth century in order to protect the farmers from being helpless before the commission agents who operate in towns and mandis. Unless the farmers are assured of receiving appropriate returns for their labor, no amount of incentive will encourage them to take up new plans for agricultural production and improvement of soils. The importance of such markets lies not only in the functions they fulfil, but in their reactions upon production. Well regulated markets create in the mind of a farmer a feeling of confidence and of receiving a fair play, and this is the mood in which he is the most willing to accept new ideas and to strive to improve his agricultural production. Unless the cultivator can be certain of securing adequate value for the quality and purity of his produce, the efforts required for an improvement in those will not be fruitful.

If the agricultural markets are expected to function smoothly and efficiently without jolts and jerks, they must have a firm grip over the wide range of activity covering all the stages. The genesis of a regulated market is that the market must afford facilities for trading, regulate it in an impartial manner, and facilitate speedy settlement of disputes associated with the trading activity at the place of disposal of the buyer and the seller, a mechanism under which bargains can be strict and completed without causing any loss to anyone.

Keeping this idea in mind, the Royal Commission on Agriculture (1928) recommended the establishment of such regulated markets throughout the length and breadth of the country in the following ways. “The establishment of properly regulated markets would confer an immense boon on cultivating classes of India. It must indeed, in our view, form essential part of ordered plan of agricultural development in this country, for only in this way the work of agricultural development can be brought to fruition”.

In Bihar, it was considered worthwhile that, “For achieving overall efficiency in marketing, attack should be made on the fronts and the various aspects of marketing should be billed together to minimize and reduce marketing cost.” With this in view, programs were formulated for the establishment of regulated markets. But in Bihar, during this plan also, no significant progress could be made for the establishment of regulated markets.

The third five-year plan contemplated the regulation of markets in different parts of the country. As a matter of fact, it was during this agriculture oriented plan that the drawbacks of the existing agricultural markets-shortage of space, poor lay-out, unfair prices, inadequacy of marketing facilities, etc. came to surface. It was recognized that regulated markets could play a valuable role in the marketing process as the nerve-center of marketing is the agricultural produce.