Précis: A passage on agricultural distress and farm-sector reform
Subtopic: Section B · Précis
How to structure your answer
Source passage (~740 words): the candidate will receive a passage arguing that Indian agricultural distress is mis-described when it is reduced to a price-of-produce problem. The passage will identify four overlapping crises — falling per-capita land holdings, declining soil and water, weakening monsoon predictability, and a credit system that under-prices risk for the small farmer. It will discuss the standard responses — minimum support prices, fertiliser subsidy, crop insurance, loan waivers — and argue that each addresses a symptom while leaving the underlying structure intact. It will propose a different set of reforms — consolidation through land-leasing markets, public investment in soil and water at watershed scale, climate-adapted seeds and crop calendars, and parametric weather insurance — and close with the principle that the policy goal is not the rescue of the farmer of today but the construction of a farm sector that does not need rescuing.
Approach: précis to ~245 words. Preserve the four-crisis diagnosis and the four-reform prescription; compress each into a single listed sentence. The closing principle ('not the rescue of today's farmer but the construction of a sector that does not need rescuing') must survive intact.
What an examiner expects: a noun-phrase title; one paragraph; the four-and-four schema preserved; the closing principle stated as the candidate's final sentence; word count in brackets.
Common pitfalls: (1) reducing the passage to a story about MSP; (2) dropping one of the four crises or four reforms; (3) softening the closing principle into a generic call for reform.
Detailed model answer
550 words · target 250 words · 25 min
Sample original passage: Indian agriculture occupies a paradoxical place in the country's political economy. It accounts for less than a fifth of national output but provides primary livelihood to more than two-fifths of the workforce, and that asymmetry — declining share of output, persistent share of labour — is the structural source of farm-sector distress. The decades of Green Revolution productivity gains have flattened. Real returns to cultivation have stagnated in most regions, and the gap between input costs and output prices has narrowed in step. Minimum support prices, designed to protect farmers from price collapses, have come to function as a ceiling rather than a floor for the limited set of crops they cover, and procurement is geographically uneven, favouring a handful of states that grew politically powerful around the wheat-rice axis of the 1970s. Land holdings have continued to fragment with each generation: the average holding is now about one hectare, which makes mechanisation, professional management and the use of formal credit increasingly difficult. Three reform directions are pursued in the policy literature. The first is market reform — expanding the network of regulated wholesale markets, allowing private procurement under enforceable contracts, and lifting some of the prohibitions on inter-state trade. The second is income support, exemplified by direct cash transfers under PM-KISAN that bypass the price-based machinery entirely. The third is structural diversification — extending crop insurance, raising horticulture and dairy production, improving cold-chain infrastructure, and encouraging farmer-producer organisations to give small holders some of the bargaining power they lack as individuals. The political difficulty of agricultural reform comes from the unusual width of its losers and beneficiaries: any reform that helps small farmers in the long run risks unsettling the political bloc that gained from the system as it stood. The puzzle of farm-sector reform is therefore as much political as technical.
Model précis (≈ 240 words): Indian agriculture occupies a paradoxical place: it accounts for under a fifth of national output yet provides primary livelihood to more than two-fifths of the workforce, and that asymmetry is the structural source of farm-sector distress. Green Revolution productivity gains have flattened. Real returns to cultivation have stagnated in most regions, and the gap between input costs and output prices has narrowed. Minimum support prices, designed to protect farmers from price collapses, function as a ceiling rather than a floor for the limited set of crops they cover, and procurement is geographically uneven, favouring states that grew politically powerful around the wheat-rice axis of the 1970s. Holdings continue to fragment with each generation; the average is now about one hectare, making mechanisation, professional management and formal credit progressively difficult. Three reform directions are pursued in the literature. The first is market reform — expanding regulated wholesale markets, enabling enforceable private contracts and lifting prohibitions on inter-state trade. The second is income support, exemplified by direct cash transfers that bypass the price machinery. The third is structural diversification — extending crop insurance, raising horticulture and dairy output, improving cold-chain infrastructure and encouraging farmer-producer organisations to give small holders bargaining power they lack individually. The political difficulty of reform lies in the unusual breadth of its losers and beneficiaries: any reform that helps small farmers in the long run risks unsettling the bloc that benefited from the existing system. The puzzle is therefore as much political as technical.
What an examiner expects to see
- Target word count: 240-250.
- Title: 'Beyond the Price-of-Produce Diagnosis'.
- Preserve the four-crisis diagnosis: land, soil, weather, credit.
- Preserve the four-reform prescription: leasing markets, watershed investment, climate-adapted seeds, parametric insurance.
- Compress each into a single listed sentence.
- Retain the closing principle about constructing a sector that does not need rescuing.
- Third person; indirect speech; no author named.
- Single paragraph; word count in brackets.
- Avoid technical jargon beyond what the passage uses.
- Numbers as words for small, digits for large.
Concrete cases, schemes and judgments
- Title example: 'Beyond the Price-of-Produce Diagnosis'.
- Compression of crises: 'The author identifies four overlapping crises — shrinking per-capita land, declining soil and water, weakening monsoon predictability, and a credit system that under-prices risk for the small farmer.'
- Compression of reforms: 'The author proposes a different set of reforms — consolidation through land-leasing markets, public investment in soil and water at watershed scale, climate-adapted seeds and crop calendars, and parametric weather insurance.'
- Closing line: 'The author concludes that the policy goal is not the rescue of the farmer of today but the construction of a farm sector that does not need rescuing. (246 words)'