ESG Investing: Putting The Environmental, Social & Governance in Profitable

tually higher in the following weeks. Clearly, if the purpose was containing prices, it was not served. Similarly, another example, Mustad was suspended in October 2021. The retail price of mustard remained at the higher levels. We know that price is a function of multiple economic factors and has no correlation with futures trading. The futures platform is at best a messenger, not the price setter. Let me give you a coronary: so if you point that if the prices are rising and you go and close a physical mandi, then there is no point. Similarly, we are an electronic market - a place for price discovery. We cannot contribute to the price rise; so suspending the futures trading to control price rise is totally illogical. I hope people understand that what they are trying to achieve they are not going to get by suspending future trading. They are only causing more and more harm; what it does is that it shatters the confidence of existing market participants. We can see that in equity markets when there are issues pertaining to the market, certain individuals are banned. Have you ever seen that a company is banned from trading? Hardly. How can it be any different in commodities market? So, if you find questions related to market integrity, you take actions accordingly, and banning the commodity is not the solution.

Question: NCDEX along with its Investor Protection Fund Trust has recently launched the first call centre for farmers and farmer producer organizations to impart complete knowledge about agricultural derivatives and related market infrastructure services. What impact do you foresee this bringing in the near-and long -term future and how receptive do you believe the farmers and their organizations would be to this service?

I will answer the question in two parts. First, why we started this. NCDEX has always been committed to the cause of bringing the futures to the farmers, one of the gaps that we identified in bringing the farmer participations was that the famers would have queries and they would not know whom to contact for immediate resolution, and if the query remains unresolved for long then they would put the thought of using an exchange on the back burner. So, it had to be a one stop solution for all queries, which means only the exchange was in the position to do it. That was the reason to introduce the NIKCC or NCDEX ITF Kissan Call Centre, it is our attempt to address this gap. NIKCC addresses queries in real time, and also tells them about the benefits, like price discovery. This is also an opportunity to build deeper connections with the farmers which is clearly our objective of reaching the last mile stakeholder. Coming to the second part, we have many ambitious plans for the future. It may be too early, but we want to be a one stop solution to all farmer queries for which we will have to do some backward and forward integration. When I say backward, we want to collaborate with Krishi Vigyan Kendra to provide information about the pre sowing part to the farmer. Similarly, we extend our reach within the financial ecosystem to provide lending. So, these are the two things we want to build on. We also have put in lot effort to increase our ground presence given the fragmented nature of the Indian agriculture system which will help further familiarise the farmer about the exchange.