Though only cursorily reported by the increasingly page three obsessed mainstream media, an important war with far-reaching implications for the future of the Indian economy is being waged in urban wholesale markets for control of the growing volume of agricultural produce flowing into the country’s fast-expanding cities. In early June fruit and vegetable wholesale markets in several cities including Delhi and Bangalore, were closed for several days following a nation-wide strike called by trade associations which dominate the APMC (Agriculture Produce Marketing Commission) yards, to which farmers are obliged to bring or send their agriculture produce for sale through daily auction.

The burden of the grievance of the powerful cartels which control these markets is that large FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) companies, particularly multinationals- a handy bogeyman of native traders who since the dawn of independence have refined the crude science of short-changing illiterate farmers into a fine art- are by-passing APMC yards and purchasing farm produce directly from farmers. Moreover they are (horror of horrors) writing contract farming agreements with farmers, guaranteeing the latter assured prices.

Though relatively privileged urban citizens tend to regard low food prices as an entitlement, right-thinking people need to reflect upon and seek way and means to rectify the persistently unequal terms of trade between urban and rural India. Curiously, despite the contribution of the agriculture sector to the nation’s GDP (gross domestic product) having shrunk from 50 percent in the 1950s to 27 percent currently, the rural economy still supports 67 percent of the nation’s population. This is an indication that neither urban India nor Indian industry has expanded sufficiently to absorb the surplus population of village India. Worse, prices of rural produce have been consistently suppressed by a ban on exports and official discouragement of the growth and development of a viable domestic food processing industry.

The consequence of persistent artificial suppression of prices of agriculture produce is the huge and widening standard of living gap between urban and rural India. It’s not that India’s rural citizens are lazy or inefficient. Indeed India’s Green Revolution of the 1960-70s quadrupled foodgrains production and saved the country from mass starvation. Moreover India is the world’s second largest producer of fruit and vegetables. Unfortunately because of faulty government policies an estimated 20 million tonnes of foodgrains become unfit for human consumption and over 40 percent of the nation’s horticulture produce rots on the ground because of lack of downstream cold storage and food processing industries. The annual damage suffered by farmers for loss of horticulture produce is estimated at a mind-boggling Rs.50,000 crore- a loss which has huge consequences for Indian industry as a whole in terms of reduction of mass purchasing power.

Quite obviously the status quo which traditional traders in APMC yards are demanding by raising the bogey of multinationals entering the farm sector, is unacceptable. The national interest demands a radical departure from past practice and organised sector corporates including multinationals, ready, willing and able to invest in a strong rural marketing infrastructure (storage silos, cold chain and agri produce processing facilities) should be encouraged to provide a fair deal for India’s farmers and step in where government and the trade have failed. Distress selling on a mass scale which has been the consistent condition of India’s farmers has to stop. 

Bollywood needs a mindset change

The staging of IIFA (International Indian Film Academy) Awards in Amsterdam in early June which received saturation coverage in the Indian media, especially television, was an over-hyped celebration of mediocrity. Despite the moguls and stars of Bollywood receiving acres of media coverage and strutting stages around the world, the plain truth is that the world’s largest feature film industry, i.e Bollywood and its regional clones around the country, are peripheral players in the fast-growth global movies and entertainment industry dominated by the US and Hollywood in particular, which is enjoying unprecedented prosperity.

Of course it’s true that in terms of the technical essentials of the film industry- cinematography, sound recording, digitalisation etc., Bollywood has attained international proficiency and has demonstrated its capability to produce lavishly mounted, superbly recorded cinema. However neither its movie moguls nor its articulate English-fluent stars are capable of summoning up the courage to move out of the rut of routine song-and-dance formula films into the world of the big boys of international cinema who have transformed the movie industry into the most popular story-telling medium worldwide, simultaneously competing with and drawing from the news media and the book publishing trade. Regrettably the Indian feature films industry seems to be enmeshed in a time warp, obstinately sticking to the obsolete notion that cinema by definition is an entertainment medium, a mass spectacle designed to appeal to audiences cutting across class, education and market segmentation boundaries.

This fatal cerebral flaw combined with poor marketing explains the astonishing reality that 90 percent of the feature films produced by the world’s largest film industry are box-office disasters. Despite popular cinema and television being declared an “industry” in 2003 to attract legitimate bank and organised sector finance, there are very few hardcore financiers ready and willing to bankroll the pastiche formula films of Indian cinema.

To lift India’s high-potential film industry out of this morass, its leading lights need to urgently change their collective mindset. For one, they need to get rid of the notion that the raison d’etre of cinema is “entertainment”. It is as much to inform, explain, detail and educate. In sum, Bollywood needs to morph into the world’s largest story-telling industry. This requires according prime importance to choice of dramatic stories (of which there is no dearth in the subcontinent) and to detailed plot and scripting- the achilles heel of Indian cinema. Secondly India’s movie moguls need to bone up on the principles of market segmentation. The cinematic schmaltz bereft of social context which is the current fashion in Bollywood, is an inherently losing proposition which insults the meanest intelligence. In this connection Bollywood’s benighted leaders can learn an object lesson from America: two-thirds of Hollywood’s annual revenue is generated in foreign markets.

But while it is facile to rubbish Bollywood and its puerile output, there’s no denying that it is a high-potential, employment-intensive industry in its own right. But since it is cerebrally challenged, it needs to co-opt intellectual talent to facilitate its transformation from an industry providing mindless entertainment into a story-telling medium which provides some insights into the Indian, indeed human, condition.

Also read: Bollywood hypocrisy