"India's food price stabilisation policy oscillates between protecting consumers and remunerating farmers, but rarely serves both." Critically examine with reference to the onion export policy since 2023.

Onion, a low-weight but high-visibility item in the food basket, is managed not through a Minimum Support Price but through trade restrictions and a Price Stabilisation Fund (PSF) buffer. The policy record since 2023 shows genuine intent on both sides, yet an infrastructure deficit that keeps the two goals in tension.

The consumer-protection tilt (2023–24)

• A Minimum Export Price of USD 800/tonne was notified in October 2023 to hold domestic availability [1].
• When that proved insufficient, exports were placed under outright prohibition from 8 December 2023 to 31 March 2024 [2].
• Reopening in May 2024 was only conditional — MEP of USD 550/tonne plus a 40% export duty [3].

The farmer-remuneration correction came later

• The duty was halved to 20% in September 2024, and abolished entirely from 1 April 2025 [4].
• Restrictions therefore ran, in some form, for roughly sixteen months — long enough to distort the price signals on which sowing decisions rest.

Where it did partly serve both

• Alongside the ban, NCCF and NAFED were directed to procure 7 lakh tonnes under the PSF, cushioning growers [2].
• 4.68 lakh tonnes were eventually procured, largely from Maharashtra, and Maharashtra mandi modal prices in April–July 2024 (₹1,230–2,578/quintal) ran well above the ₹693–1,205 of the previous year [3].

Why the trade-off persists

• Onion is perishable and rabi-heavy; without adequate scientific storage and cold-chain capacity, growers cannot hold stock and are pushed into distress sales.
• Interventions are reactive — announced after a price spike or collapse — so relief reaches farmers who have already sold.

The oscillation is thus less a failure of intent than of instruments: trade policy is a blunt tool asked to do an infrastructure job. Strengthening storage and processing under the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund and Operation Greens, with a predictable, rule-based export regime, would let procurement stabilise prices rather than chase them — serving both ends of the chain.