 "Bhavantar plan")
Last week, the new Congress government in Madhya Pradesh put on hold the much-feted “Flat Bhavantar Bhugtan Yojana” pending a review of its performance.
The scheme, which was touted as India’s first large-scale experiment with Deficiency Price Payment, has been riddled with controversies from the start but was considered a test case for other states where farmers were struggling with falling market prices.
Before this, there had been stray attempts to directly compensate farmers for market losses. In 2009-10, for instance, a scheme for betel nut farmers was started in Goa’s Ponda. Under this, the state set the base price
