Busting brokers

That a meeting of top bureaucrats has directed the Ministry of Commerce and Supplies to crack down on the ‘middlemen’ at Kaalimati Fruit and Vegetable Market is a welcome piece of news, but it should be taken with a pinch of salt. Directives are easy enough to issue, and they do come thick and fast from our politicians and bureaucrats. But only a few of them are followed up diligently and even fewer see prompt implementation.



This latest directive was issued by a meeting chaired by none other than Chief Secretary Madhav Ghimire himself at a meeting attended by several government secretaries. The very high-profile nature of the meeting and also the fact that the top bureaucrats took the decision on their own give one hope that implementation will be thorough. The directive is also a test of the seriousness of our top bureaucrats and of their capacity to implement something when they really want to.



This newspaper has consistently championed a free market economy and we do honestly believe that there is no better economic model. But the free market is full of flaws and needs proper regulation. The crackdown on “middlemen” at the Kalimati fruit and vegetable market would be one small but significant step in that direction.



It is common knowledge that “middlemen” and “brokers” at the Kalimati market rip off the people at both ends of the supply chain —producers and consumers—and earn obscene profits. By one estimate, the middlemen raise the price of fruits and vegetables by as much as 200 percent after they buy them from the primary producer. In that sense the platform provided by the government – the Kaalimati market has been developed and promoted by the state— is being used by the brokers to exploit unsuspecting farmers and naïve consumers.



If the state machinery acts decisively and successfully curbs the anomalies in the Kaalimati market, a place that holds significance in the daily life of the common man here, it will set a good precedent for similar crackdowns in other markets. One of the problems with our free market system has been that in the absence of much needed monitoring and regulation by state agencies, it has become a free for all and prone to all kinds of manipulations and distortions. Monopolies, cartels, price fixing, hoarding, sub-standard products—you name it.



They are all to be found in our highly skewed market system. The essence of a free market economy is a small-size government that does not itself engage in economic activities, but it doesn’t mean a weak government that doesn’t do any monitoring. What we need is a government that is small but strong and capable of checking the malpractices of the marketplace. If the directive issued by our top bureaucrats is meant to be a small but first step in that direction, they will have made a hefty contribution.

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