India must liberate its farms and not just protect them

We should go beyond tariff protection and give farm sector reforms another go to improve its prospects

- NARAYAN RAMACHANDRAN

As mango lovers in India would have noted, there was a glut this year. While premium varieties like Happus and Imam Pasand maintained their prices from prior years, ordinary mangoes like Totapuri plunged to their minimum support price (MSP) of ₹4 per kilogram.

The Indian mango price story of 2025 is emblematic of the price dynamics of different types of food items in India, spanning vegetables, edible oils, cereals, fish and chicken. Overall, food prices have declined this year from the previous year, but these declines mask wider price variation among varieties and regions than before.

In July 2025, food inflation registered a decline of 1.76% year-on-year. This decline was explained by a combination of the base effect (prices in July 2024 were high) and extraordinary drops in the prices of vegetables (down by roughly 29%), pulses (about 15%) and spices (about 15%), apart from moderate but notable declines in the prices of meat, fish, eggs, cereal and sugar.

Take the case of fish prices in India. They typically peak during the annual ban on motorized trawlers that aims to protect juvenile fish during breeding season, prevent overfishing and reduce seabed damage from trawling nets. This ban lasts for about 60 days mid-year, though the actual period can vary from one state to the next. Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka have slightly different ban periods, all between April and July. This year, peak prices for king fish, mackerel and pomfret rose, but then plunged by more than 50% after the trawler bans ended.