The ---1--- provides a legal basis for the distribution system that earlier operated only as a regular government scheme. The –1--- made access to the distribution system a right, entitling every person belonging to a “priority household” to receive 5 kg of food grains per month at a subsidised price not exceeding Rs 2/kg for wheat and Rs 3/kg for rice. Priority households were further defined so as to cover up to 75% of the country’s rural population and 50% in urban areas.

The Centre currently fixes MSPs for 23 farm commodities — 7 cereals (paddy, wheat, maize, bajra, jowar, ragi and barley), 5 pulses (chana, arhar/tur, urad, moong and masur), 7 oilseeds (rapeseed-mustard, groundnut, soyabean, sunflower, sesamum, safflower and nigerseed) and 4 commercial crops (cotton, sugarcane, copra and raw jute) — based on the ----2-----.

But the –2--itself is not any statutory body set up through an Act of Parliament. This despite its coming to existence in 1965 and MSPs being announced since the time of the Green Revolution, starting with wheat in 1966 - 67. The—2--, “an attached office of the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India”.

The only crop where MSP payment has some statutory element is sugarcane. This is due to its pricing being governed by the Sugarcane (Control) Order, 1966 issued under the---3---.  That order, in turn, provides for the fixation of a ‘fair and remunerative price’ (FRP) for cane during every sugar year (October-September). But even the FRP — which, incidentally, was until 2008-09 called the ‘statutory minimum price’ or SMP — is payable not by the government. The responsibility to make FRP payment to farmers within 14 days of cane purchase lies solely with the sugar mills.

Extending MSP to all farm produce and guaranteeing it through law is hugely challenging, fiscally and otherwise. It also explains why economists increasingly are in favour of guaranteeing minimum “incomes” rather than “prices” to farmers. One way to achieve that is via direct cash transfers either on a flat per-acre (as in the Telangana government’s Rythu Bandhu scheme) or per-farm household (the Centre’s Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi) basis.