You talk as if selling directly is so easy - how will they do that without a middle-man for distribution? It's not like every neighbourhood in India has a farm next door! And the farmers can't afford to waste time selling a few kilos to many, when they produce 100's of kilos of produce!
What Modi's government has done is to cleverly replace the brokers with corporates as the middle-man, in the guise of "reforms".
The buyers will now prefer the "contract farming" route to procurement, as the new farm laws has tilted the power in their favour. With the broker (and dismantling of the regulated marketplace) out of the picture, the corporates can now take even more advantage of the farmers. (Note that the brokers also manipulated the market on behalf of the corporates earlier, but eliminating them is now more favourable for them as they have managed to bribe the government to write the laws in their favour).
Nothing had been eliminated. Mandi is there. Msp is there. The law provides additional avenue for farmers. They now have multiple choices. Sell to individuals users, corporates, mandis create their own like milk corporation.
MSP is deliberately not specified explicitly in the new farm laws. Dismanting regulated marketplaces, in favour of corporates and contract faming have made it redundant and only gives an illusion of choice -
- Farmers cannot sell to individual users at a scale because they don't have any distribution networks.
- Weakly regulated mandis are as good as free market with no real protection.
- Contract farming with corporates shifts the balance of power away from farmers as they do not have the capability to negotiate on equal terms with them. This is made worse with the new farm laws deliberately favouring the corporates.
