evidence: Rs.200 Crore allocated to support organized cultivation of highly specialized medicinal and aromatic plants and associated industry 22,000 rural Haats to be developed and upgraded into Gramin agricultural markets (grams) for farmers to directly sell to consumers and bulk purchasers [...] Announcing the development and upgradation of existing 22,000 rural haats into Gramin Agricultural Markets (GrAMs), the Finance Minister said that more than 86% of farmers in India are small and marginal who are not always in a position to directly transact at APMCs and other wholesale markets. In these GrAMs, physical infrastructure will be strengthened using MGNREGA and other Government Schemes and would be electronically linked to e-NAM and exempted from regulations of APMCs. This would provide farmers facility to make direct sale to consumers and bulk purchasers, the Minister added. Shri Jaitley said that in the last Budget, the Government had announced strengthening of e-NAM and to expand coverage of e-NAM to 585 APMCs. Out of that, 470 APMCs have been connected to e-NAM network and rest will be connected by March, 2018. Further, an Agri-Market Infrastructure Fund with a corpus of Rs.2000 crore will be set up for developing and upgrading agricultural marketing infrastructure in the 22000 Grameen Agricultural Markets (GrAMs) and 585 APMCs, the Minister informed.