Ninety two years is unusually long life expectancy, but not for policy. Lord Linlithgow was Governor General and Viceroy from 1936 to 1943. It was an unremarkable stint and there was no reason for Indians to remember him fondly. As far as I know, there is nothing named after Lord Linlithgow anywhere. The only exception is Alwar, where there is Hope Circus, named after Lord Linlithgow, though it uses his personal name of Victor Alexander John Hope.
But Lord Linlithgow did leave other legacies. I have written about his legacy of LBAs and LBKs elsewhere. Let me state that briefly. A Royal Commission on Agriculture was set up in 1926 and Linlithgow was its Chairman. Among several recommendations, it said poor quality Indian cattle must be improved by importing better quality foreign bulls and using them to impregnate inferior Indian cows. These government posts of LBAs and LBKs were created in 1936, after Linlithgow became Governor General. LBAs (Linlithgow’s Bull Assistants) imported foreign bulls and maintained them. LBKs (Linlithgow’s Bull Keepers) ensured impregnation occurred on time.
It took many years to abolish these posts. However, Lord Linlithgow left another legacy that still abides, 92 years after the Royal Commission’s Report. You could trace it back to Berar and Cotton, but APMC Acts, in the way we know them, go back to the Famine Commission of 1928. To quote, “It is only in Berar that the constitution of markets is regulated by special legislation and that the management is in the hands of elected committees. …
The most hopeful solution of the cultivator’s marketing difficulties seems to lie in the improvement of communications and the establishment of regulated markets, and we recommend for the consideration of other provinces, the establishment of regulated markets on the Berar system. … The Bombay Act is, however, definitely limited to cotton markets and the bulk of the transactions in Berar markets is also in that crop. We consider that the system can conveniently be extended to other crops. … We consider that the management of these markets should be vested in a market committee.
This committee should contain adequate representation of the actual cultivators in the areas served by the market and, if their interests are not adequately safeguarded, an official of the agricultural department might well be nominated to the committee to protect them. It is undesirable that any licensed broker should be eligible for election to the committee as a representative of the cultivator.” There was a bit more to Berar and cotton. The first regulated market was for cotton, in Karanja in 1886. The primary motive behind the Berar Cotton and Grain Markets Act of 1897 wasn’t to address the farmer’s marketing problems, as the Famine Commission suggested, but to ensure cheap supplies of cotton to textile mills in England.
Farmers were indirectly taxed and the revenue collected wasn’t necessarily used to develop infrastructure. That history showed doing something in the name of the farmer wasn’t quite the same as doing something for the farmer and such morals of history rarely change. Nevertheless, after the Royal Commission, several provinces did pass such laws (there was a model APMC Bill in 1931)—Central Provinces, Madras, Baroda, Bombay, Punjab, Mysore. This changed after Independence. Many people have written extensively on Indian agriculture and its marketing issues.
I recall a study commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India, known as the Millennium Study on “State of the Indian Farmer”. Despite the National Commission on Agriculture in 1976 and the National Commission on Farmers in 2004, I haven’t quite seen anything like the Millennium Study, though except academics, most people seem to have forgotten about it. In 2004, it was published in a massive 27 volume set. One entire volume (Vol.7) was on agricultural marketing and was authored by S S Acharya.
Whether one uses those Acharya figures, or figures from someone else, a clutch of states (Andhra, Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, MP, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, TN, UP and West Bengal) passed APMC Acts in the period from the second half of the 1960s to first half of the 1980s. (A few pre-dated this period, but new legislation was required because of state reorganisation.) This was a dubious period in India’s economic policy-making and it took decades to repeal or amend statutes passed then. For instance, I think there will be a strong correlation between items reserved for SSI (small-scale industry) and the number of APMC regulated markets and I am not being deliberately flippant. The Acharya figures are 146 regulated markets in 1945 and 7,161 in 2001.
The 1991-92 Economic Survey told us how wonderful APMC Acts were. The 2014-15 Economic Survey told us how disastrous they were. That’s the way it should be. Times change. Acharya’s book mentioned APMC market committees have traders and commission agents as members. Wasn’t that what the Famine Commission warned against? I checked out Azadpur Mandi, not at the turn of the millennium, but today.
And yes, it does have traders and commission agents as members. Doesn’t that imply regulatory capture? The 2014-15 Economic Survey stated it in the following way: “There is a perception that the positions in the market committee (at the state level) and the market board—which supervises the market committee—are occupied by the politically influential. They enjoy a cosy relationship with the licensed commission agents who wield power by exercising monopoly power within the notified area, at times by forming cartels.” No wonder, there is resistance to change.
Bibek Debroy
Chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the PM. Views are personal
(Tweets @bibekdebroy)