e-NAM yet to gain ground

Parveen Arora

Launched with fanfare in 2016, the electronic national agriculture market (e-NAM), an e-trading platform for the farmers to sell their produce across the country, is yet to catch the fancy of farmers. The project has received a lukewarm response from farmers in Haryana, which contributed significantly to the Green Revolution. Instead of going in for e-trading, farmers prefer to go to local grain markets where they get almost the same price.

Inadequate awareness and lack of interest among farmers, absence of well-equipped labs at grain markets, non-availability of experts at grain markets and lack of inexpensive transport facility are said to be the main reasons why this ambitious project of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is yet to take off in Haryana.

With the goal of ‘one nation, one market’, PM Modi had launched the project on April 14, 2016. In Haryana, the project was started on a pilot basis from Karnal and Ellenabad (Sirsa) grain markets on the same date; Shahabad and Ambala grain markets joined the project on June 1, 2016. Subsequently, 33 more grain markets were electronically linked in the first week of October 2016, while 17 other grain markets were linked with the e-NAM software by March 31, 2017. As of now, e-NAM has been started in 54 of the 113 grain markets in the state, while approval has been granted by the Union Government to add 27 grain markets to this system and it is claimed that these will be integrated by March 31, 2020.

The progress of the project can be gauged from the fact that so far around 3.75 lakh farmers have got themselves registered out of around 15.5 lakh in the state even after more than three-and-a-half years of the launch, sources in the Haryana State Agricultural Marketing Board (HSAMB) said, adding that as many as 10,096 traders and 21,355 commission agents got themselves registered for e-marketing.

Through this initiative, the HSAMB has traded 1,348.66 lakh quintals of crops, valued at Rs 35,055.8 crore, till January 31, 2020, and it has done e-payments of 19,535 invoices to the tune of Rs 40.30 crore, benefiting 5,942 farmers. The trading through this portal is not as per expectations of the HSAMB as around 180 lakh metric tonnes of wheat, paddy, mustard, sunflower and grams are being procured in various grain markets every year.

Farmers say the state government started this initiative in haste without doing proper groundwork. “e-NAM was envisioned as a pan-India electronic trading portal to create a global market platform for agricultural commodities, but so far it has not become farmer-friendly. Farmers prefer to go to the local market instead of coming here. The farmers must be made aware of the benefits of selling their produce through this portal,” says Vijay Kapoor, a progressive farmer and state general secretary of the Kisan Welfare Club, Haryana.

Rajinder Kumar, a commission agent in the Karnal grain market, says under e-NAM, the authorities are supposed to test samples of the produce and upload the report so that the farmer could find buyers in some other mandi registered on the e-NAM and the buyer can fix the rate on the basis of the quality, but here the laboratories established at the e-NAM centres are not fully equipped as only the moisture detection machine is available. Other work like sorting of grains, grading and cleaning are being done manually, which leads to errors in quality assessment. “A trader purchases the grain through the portal on the basis of the quality of the grain shown online, but without sophisticated machines it is very difficult to specify accurately the quality of the crop, so the government must ensure well-equipped labs in grain markets,” he adds.

Shri Chand, another commission agent, says the non-availability of inexpensive transport facility is another hurdle. A trader sitting anywhere in the country purchases crop from Haryana, but he has to arrange inexpensive transport to bring the crop to his state. “The government should make arrangements for transport in all grain markets at cheap rates,” he says.

Raj Kumar Beniwal, chief marketing enforcement officer (CMEO), HSAMB, is confident that farmers will soon sell their produce through this system. “This step is good for our agricultural sector, under which farmers can decide when, where and at what price they would sell their produce. The objective of this initiative is to empower farmers, providing them a wide platform for selling their produce. Haryana has also started inter-state trade with Uttar Pradesh. We will ensure well-equipped labs at all grain markets having the facility of sorting, grading and cleaning machines,” he claims.