By: Sandip Das
Nine months after fruit and vegetables were freed from the Azadpur mandi’s clutches — when Delhi was under the President’s rule — the state government’s lethargy has resulted in a situation where no alternative private mandis have come up.
As a result, almost all of the 8,000-10,000 tonnes of fruit and vegetable supplies in the capital take place through Azadpur and its sub-mandis like Okhla where commissions are decided by buyer cartels.
The first kisan mandi — the first competition to Azadpur — to be set up by the Small Farmers Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC) that works under the Union agriculture ministry, meanwhile, is facing yet another set of problems with its physical location.
When work began on the kisan mandi, the SFAC was planning to rent a Nafed godown in Lawrence Road where farmers could sell their produce directly to buyers, to cut various layers of middlemen in traditional mandis like Azadpur.
When this fizzled out, a 1.6-acre plot that belonged to the Delhi Milk Scheme was identified in Alipur in the capital’s northern tip, bordering Haryana — agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh even did a soft launch in September 2014.
The plan was to build a state-of-art mandi to serve as a showpiece for private players with cold storage and processing/grading facilities. Once operational, the mandi — and over a period of time, 4-5 mandis were planned — would serve as a display centre for 30-40 farmer producers’ organisations (FPOs), so that bulk buyers could come and inspect samples here.
Once deals were done, the goods were to be delivered to bulk buyers like hotels, resident welfare associations and big corporate retailers at their doorstep. The plan was to, within a year or so, grab at least 5-8% of the Azadpur market.
The SFAC gave a contract to the National Buildings Construction Corporation, but was unable to get a building permission since the Municipal Corporation of Delhi needed to see the original land titles. But since the land was originally acquired from farmers in the 1950s — the DDA came into existence only in 1957 — the title deeds are not clear and the land cannot be transferred to SFAC.
While an online portal was always part of the plan, with the land route going nowhere, the kisan mandi has decided to fastrack its e-business. According to the new plan, SFAC is tying up with FPOs as well as grading agents (it has got 100 applications for kisan mitras) to set up a seamless direct purchase system.
Under the plan, FPOs will show samples of their produce to kisan mitras across the country whose job is to evaluate/grade fruit and vegetables by visiting their farms and inspecting the crop; this produce will then be put up for sale on the portal.
When buyers come and place orders in the online marketplace, the SFAC will guarantee quality through the kisan mitras. Buyers will then deposit the funds with the SFAC and once the goods are delivered — the kisan mitra organises the transportation — the SFAC releases the payment to the FPOs.
The e-kisan portal is to be up in another 2-3 weeks and the SFAC is going to deal in onions, potatoes, mangoes, bananas and tomatoes to begin with. While buyers across the country can access the portal, farmers in only 7 states which have delisted fruit and vegetables can participate.
How quickly the online market will take off remains to be seen since farmers prefer to bring their stock to the mandi on one day and sell it rather than wait for individual orders.
Also, apart from the fact that buyers need to develop faith in the kisan mitras’ grading, sorting of fruit and vegetables requires large storage areas, the type typically found in mandis that, in the case of Delhi, the government has not been able to provide.