In my experience in villages around Delhi, one cannot hope to have an improved supply of electricity for the water pump by installing a captive step-up transformer or to get a ‘crop loan’ sanctioned or even a sale deed registered despite ‘connections’ and the ‘computerisation’ of land records, without paying a ‘reasonable bribe’. To add insult to injury, there is simply zero concern among rent collectors about any accountability or fear of being apprehended. A clear distinction is maintained between the de jure and de facto, and you are constantly reminded that de jure is only dikhane ke vaste (for appearances only). I am quite convinced that this malgovernance in rural India generates the widespread feeling of gross injustice that feeds the Naxalite and other forms of militancy, whose avowed goal is to overthrow such an exploitative state.

Can this chasm between de jure and de facto that has managed to choke off progress in agriculture be eliminated or minimised? The well-meaning efforts of civil societies or micro-finance institutions do not appear to be a substitute for real commercialisation of agriculture and converting the ‘peasant’ into a viable, globally competitive farmer, whose self interest in bringing in new technology and fresh investment coincides with fragmented landholders and rural wage earners.

If such commercialisation can be achieved in agriculture, the government’s role will switch from being a supplier of services and inputs to regulation and supervision. This will be liberating and hugely productivity enhancing as experience in other sectors has shown. Civil society organisations will also be far more effective in ensuring that the government and large corporate entities do not collude and connive against the small landholder and wage earners as they will have a much more visible and larger target for their actions rather than the ubiquitous babu or the patwari.

So my suggestion is to start with the other end of the spectrum and encourage modern retail organisations and companies to establish direct supply links with farmers. The ideal will be to replicate the Coop experience in Scotland and parts of Europe where farmers have gotten together to achieve the desired direct connectivity to the market rather than work through layers of intermediaries.

It has been pointed out to me that the National Dairy Development Board experiment with organising small oilseed producers in Gujarat, on similar lines as dairy farmers, had failed. It would be useful to look at the reasons for that failure and draw the necessary lessons to make it work in the present conditions, which may be different. And we should also consider allowing and encouraging foreign multi-product retail companies to establish their agro-procurement operations for the Indian domestic and export markets. They could bring with them much needed investments in logistics, new technologies and the capacity to fend off the babu.

The small farmers’ interests against those of large retailers can be protected by a vigilant civil society and a robust regulatory mechanism. This will liberate us from the situation where agriculture is starved of investment and new technologies, and wilts as a result of stifling and all-pervasive bureaucratic intervention.

Rajiv Kumar is director and chief executive of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.

This article originally appeared on The Wall Street Journal’s livemint.com.