Uttar Pradesh to set up 2000+ mandis

     In the midst of the intense debate over the need to allow supermarket retail giants like Wal-Mart and Tesco into India, Uttar Pradesh has laid out a roadmap for expanding the existing network of mandis (agricultural market yards) by adding another 2105 in the next four years. This step alone will remove the supply-side constraints that we often hear about and provide an assured market for farmers. It is primarily because of the wide network of mandis and that too at approachable distances from farms that Punjab has turned into a food bowl of India.

    The proposed network of mandis will save UP farmers from invariably selling their produce in distress. In the absence of a network of mandis there has hardly been a harvest season when farmers have not been exploited and duped by the middlemen. It is not unusual to see farmers carrying their harvested produce to mandis  in neighboring states. Much of the Wheat harvest from western UP, for instance, flows each year into the mandis in neighboring Haryana.