Commodity Markets, Computers and Inclusive Development: A Study of Marketing and Price Formation of Cardamom with e-Auctions

The plantation sector plays a key role in fostering inclusive development in India. This chapter aims at locating the spaces and processes of exclusion in the marketing of cardamom, a major plantation crop in Kerala, and the bearing that e-auctions have in addressing them. In locating the spaces of exclusion, the study uses conceptual categories of social exclusion envisioned by Amartya Sen, like passive, active, instrumental and constitutional exclusion, to evolve new ones like subordinated or unequal inclusion, illusive inclusion and sustained exclusion. In the conventional auction system, active exclusion prevailed on account of the practice of taking a fixed quantity as a sample from all the lots regardless of its size and delay in payment along with the absence of title deeds for a large number of growers. The existence of wide variation in the price realized by different size classes of holders has been articulated as a case of subordinated/unequal inclusion. It is shown that the e-auction has been successful in addressing the subordinated/unequal exclusion. However, harnessing ICT through e-auction could hardly address the active, passive and instrumental exclusion that has been sustained over the years. This tends to suggest that in the absence of appropriate institutional innovations, the issue of social exclusion cannot be addressed only by technological innovations.