Bhubaneswar, Feb. 24 -- India's farmers continue to face severe difficulties in marketing their produce despite MSP for major crops. Without being legally enforceable, MSP has become a paper tiger and its fixation, a routine ritual. The small farmers face the problem much more because they have an urgent need for cash. Middlemen are many and they have been active in an imperfect marketing system. That MSP lacks legal enforceability has been a lacuna.

By and large, MSP arrangement leading to Government purchase has been implemented in varying degrees among states and it has been mostly limited to rice and wheat. In Odisha, for example, it is common knowledge that most small farmers sell paddy to itinerant traders at their doorstep soon af...