Don't chase numbers

FPOs will work well only if constraints are removed

The programme to promote 10,000 farmer producer organisations (FPOs), launched formally by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week, can prove a game changer for agriculture if they are given a favourable economic and legal environment to function as professionally managed business enterprises. With cooperatives having, by and large, failed to live up to the expectations, the FPOs — virtually the hybrids of cooperative and joint stock companies — are being envisaged as the implicit third sector of the economy other than the private and public sectors. They are supposed to possess the virtues of both the cooperatives and the private