The webinar on Rural Market Imperfections in India: Revisiting Old Debate with New Evidence aimed to introduce the participants about the issues pertaining to the rural market imperfections and its implications on agriculture. The webinar laid stress on the current policy priority in India, to ensure viable income to small and marginal farmers while addressing the market imperfections. The following measures have been suggested to support small and marginal farmers: firstly, labour market imperfections need to be addressed through expanding rural employment opportunities and through improving literacy & skill levels of the rural population. Secondly, by reforming land lease markets to enable easier access to land; and thirdly, by providing better access to institutional credit.
The event begins with the welcome of the speaker, Dr. Namrata Thapa by Dr. Rajeev Sharma. Dr. Thapa begins by introducing the importance of Indian agriculture in providing livelihoods to the majority of the population. Any imperfection in the factor (land, labour, capital) and input markets will manifest as imperfection in the output market. This will have a crucial bearing on farm income. It is in this context, addressing the market imperfections is critical.
The address was followed by an Interactive question-answer session where 5 to 6 questions were asked by the faculties, students, and research scholars. The session ended with a vote of thanks by Dr. Rajeev Sharma.
As an outcome, participants gained a deeper understanding of market imperfections and their implications. The session offered practical insights and highlights that the imperfections in labour market are compounded by the imperfections in land market and skill endowments of small & marginal farmers. The analysis also points out the prevalence of surplus family labour on small farms even after a decade of the enactment of a major employment guarantee program (MGNREGS) and continuing limited access to institutional credit of small farmers. These factors make augmenting land and movement of labour out of agriculture difficult.