16Built
Warehousing + online WMS
The 2015 proposal
Spatially distributed warehouses and cold storage with a computerised warehouse-management system, warehouse cash receipts and full traceability; revive rural granaries.
Where it stands in 2026
Realised through WDRA regulation and electronic Negotiable Warehouse Receipts (held in NERL/CDSL, pledgeable for credit), plus the ₹1 lakh-crore Agriculture Infrastructure Fund financing decentralised storage and cold chains.
The open gap
Village-level cold chain for perishables still lags; traceability is lot-level, not grain-level.
How to sustain & deepen it
Extend decentralised cold chain to the village for perishables (Agriculture Infrastructure Fund) and move from lot-level to batch traceability, so smallholders can store, pledge and sell when the price is right.
Sources
- ↗ WDRA — Warehousing Development & Regulatory Authority (eNWR) — Govt. of India
- ↓ Designing Warehouse Receipt Legislation: Regulatory Options and Recent Trends — FAO (Agricultural Finance Revisited), 2009
- ↓ Warehouse Receipts: Facilitating Credit and Commodity Markets — World Bank, 2007
- ↓ The role of warehouse receipt systems in enhanced commodity marketing and rural livelihoods in Africa — Food Policy (Elsevier), 2002
- ↓ Sustainable Food Cold Chains: Opportunities, Challenges and the Way Forward — FAO and UNEP, 2022