It is high time that farmers rise against organised racket
As pointed out by Akash Widanapathirana in the article titled ‘Prices rise--farmers and consumers suffer in middleman’s tyranny’ in the Sunday Times of November 5 it is the middleman’s tyranny that hits both the farmers as well as the consumers.
As is rightly said by a leading farmer “the middlemen receive thousands of kilograms of vegetables and fruits every day. They make huge profits from commissions virtually from nothing.”
A farmer takes his produce to the market with the hope of getting a fair price and the consumer goes to the market to buy his requirements which will be the farmers’ reasonable price. Does it happen?
There is a well organised racket in every market where the farmer is never allowed to sell direct to the consumer and the consumer is never allowed direct contact with the farmer.
What happens is there is a set of men flexing their muscles forcing the farmers to approach them to dispose of the produce to a retail vendor or other wholesale purchasers at a price determined by them. The vendor pays his purchase price plus the middleman’s commission and the consumer pays the selling price by retailer which includes the farmers’ loss of the choicest of the produce as well. The strong man gets his commission in the form of the choicest of the produce brought (vegetables and fruits) and commission from the retailer.
This set of strongmen enter the market early in the morning. They set out from home with nothing (produce or money) and intervene using their organised thuggery and take away pieces of the choicest of the produce brought by the farmer and get a commission from the retailer for arranging the deal. It is not only the farmer’s price imposed by this middlemen, the amount sold to the retailer is minus the portion taken as commission. This “robbed” produce in due course will swell into a substantial amount, they dispose to the sellers or restaurateurs whose liaison they have built up as part of their trade tactics/ practices.
The bulk purchasers from the farmers pay a pittance as the farm gate price and transport them to the markets. They become the wholesalers, the transporters and suppliers to the retailers. The difference between the farm gate price and ultimate price paid by the consumer has no bearing on the cost of production, actual transport cost etc,the real factors determining the economic activities. This bulky difference is what the middlemen realise as sale of the produce taken from the farmers commissions paid by the retailers and the lion share of what the consumer pays at the end becomes the windfall for the middlemen’s tyranny.
It is high time the farmers organise themselves to resist them and the local bodies ban these men who are neither sellers nor buyers but are intervening by sheer force of organised thuggery.
This is a serious problem that the state has to look into as another facet of the factors contributing to the escalating cost of living.
Do these middlemen have political clout as well that nobody dares to question their illicit intervention? R.Suntharalingam
Urumpirai