After a year-long agitation, the government repealed its three farm laws in November 2021. Alongside the repeal came assurances — including a committee to examine a legal guarantee for Minimum Support Price (MSP).

In February 2024, farmers from Punjab and Haryana resumed protests at Delhi’s borders, demanding a law guaranteeing MSP for 23 crops (in line with the Swaminathan Commission formula), debt relief, and action on other promises.

The committee that hasn’t reported

The MSP committee formed in July 2022 had not submitted a report as the protests reignited, and rounds of talks between farm unions and the government repeatedly ended in deadlock.

There are honest arguments on both sides about a legal MSP — its fiscal cost, its market effects. But a promise to "examine" it, left unresolved for years, is itself a accountability gap: either deliver the mechanism or explain transparently why not.