Allowing more freedom to the markets for agricultural products, especially permitting the commercially driven private corporate sector to find a place to compete in the market and procure from farmers is one of the most contentious issues facing the Indian political economy today. This policy direction apparently also remains to be a major step forward in the course of India’s economic reforms.
The book brings together, in a given framework, information gained from different regions. The partner institutions involved in the primary studies at the state level under my coordination not only undertook a major burden of data collection but prepared at the regional levels, their own reports which could be extremely useful to any interested reader. Careful inspection, validation and consistency checks of the primary data have been essential components of this meta-analysis.