evidence: Devinder Sharma, an agriculture policy analyst says, "It highlights the callous approach of the present government regarding creating infrastructure on the ground. At present, there are around 7,000 APMC mandis while the country needs around 42,000 mandis to ensure access of market for farmers." For a country like India, it was not a big target but successive governments have overlooked the problems of this sector, he adds. To cover this lacuna, the present government planned these GrAMs and promised to connect them with eNAM, an online trading platform. [...] Taking a leaf from the DFI committee which submitted its report in 2018, erstwhile finance minister Jaitley had announced, "We will develop and upgrade existing 22,000 rural haats into Gramin Agricultural Markets (GrAMs). In these GrAMs, physical infrastructure will be strengthened using MGNREGA and other government schemes. These GrAMs, electronically linked to e-NAM and exempted from regulations of APMCs, will provide farmers facility to make direct sale to consumers and bulk purchasers." He also announced Rs. 20 billion (Rs. 2,000 crore) of Agri-Market Infrastructure Fund (AMIF) for the purpose.