Patna, Sept. 28 -- After retirement from the army, my father took up farming at Village Shahpur, on the Pinjore-Nalagarh Road, in Haryana. After every wheat harvest, my mother used to cart the wheat herself on the tractor to the Chandigarh mandi. She used to wait for hours, sitting in the tractor, in the hot sun at the mercy of the 'Arthiyas' at the Mandi to purchase the wheat.
It was harassment of the highest degree; the arthiyas would always blackmail the farmers. These arthiyas had converted the mandis into dens of monopoly. The mechanism which was created to protect the farmers ended up throttling them. Not much effort was made in developing any infrastructure for collection and the farmers were always at the receiving end.
With the p...