Moving towards a consensus regarding the new agriculture in India: Is a movement towards innovative commercial agriculture with new organisational forms sustainable?

Risk management is an imperative for the sustainability of the farmer in the complex sociopolitical era post liberalization of the Indian Economy in 1991. Today, more than ever the farmer is caught in the market paradigm of industrialisation in urban areas and commercial agriculture in rural areas without adequate non-farm rural activities and adequate sustenance of the farming of staple crops to back it up. For all of this market and production attributes of delivery and produce need to be satisfied. The question that we ask here is whether there is potential for new kind of organisations to emerge or we still need to focus on grass root challenges of food security and sustenance of the farms as the only priority of a pressing nature. We look at John Mellors argument on development of rural areas to create a pull towards modernisation of agriculture rather than a push towards forced corporatisation. We look at a case of a rural retail franchise and flexible contractual mechanisms in it, using that as an example our focus is to analyse whether the new agriculture and new organisations combine efficiency and equity concerns to reduce Risk in Indian Agriculture.