Within moments of our entering Lasalgaon, the biggest of Nashik's 14 onion, a crowd surrounds us. It is the time of auction; farmers have pulled up in tractors and tempos laden with onions, traders walk from vehicle to vehicle assessing the produce before the bids are placed.But our presence, we are told, is an unwelcome distraction. The farmers say it is media hype over rising onion prices which leads to a crackdown by the government, reducing prices. In this case, their anger is targeted against the Centre 's advisory to state governments to dilute the impact of cartelisation and hoarding by allowing onions to be sold in the open market, not only through, and for restrictions on the amount of onions that can be stored.'If we can't sell in thewhere will we go,' they ask. 'And if we can't hold stock, the market will be flooded and prices will crash'. These may be legitimate concerns, but so are concerns over cartels and hoarding. But the farmers are in no mood for debate. We are asked to leave. Our local representative in Nashik says this is not uncommon. "The traders are inciting the farmers against the media", he tells us. It is only later, after calls are made to themanagement, that we can return to film the tightly-controlled ecosystem of traders and political patrons which control the ebb and flow of this politically volatile vegetable.The reluctance to allow us to film the auction is surprising. At the heart of the defense advanced by theof Nashik - which trade in one-third of India's onions - is the open auction process. No other vegetable, we are told, is traded in this manner where the farmer sells directly in the mandi and is given payment within the same day. In theory, this is true.But what we witnessed seemed nothing like the common perception of an auction. A small group of 4-5 traders walked swiftly from vehicle to vehicle, as a representative from thecalled out bids as if by rote, not glancing at the bidders. Within seconds, it was done, a price announced and the group moved on to the next van.It now seemed clearer why our cameras were not welcome. One of the Lasalgaon traders, Manoj Jain, explained that they have to get through "1000 tractors of onions in just 6 hours, and so there is not a moment to waste".Even so, the farmers seemed missing in the process. After we persisted in one instance, the farmer appeared. He said he got Rs 1100 a quintal (Rs 11 per kg). Was this enough, we asked? He replied somewhat nervously that he was hoping for more, around Rs 2000. But he hastened to add that he was paid on time, on the same day.But a group of onion farmers we met outside thewho could speak freely, told us that the traders operate like a cartel. "They are a union," said Kishore More, who grows onions and grapes. "They decide the price in advance. The auction is a sham. If we protest at the low prices, we are chased away".It is true that the onion traders are a tight knit group: most of them are from the Jain community, settlers in northern Maharashtra from almost a century ago, and practising this as a family trade. Manoj Jain told us his father was a onion trader, and now so is his son. More significantly, their numbers are small compared to the sheer volume of produce. Lasalgaon has 211 licensed traders, but only 40-45 are active according to Jain. Pimpalgaon, the other big, has only 55 registered traders, of which only half are active.One of the reasons why cartels thrive is the proximity between traders and those meant to protect farmers, the Agricultural Produce Management Committee, or APMC, which hands out trading licenses.Under APMC law, out of the Committee's 21 members, 18 have to be farmers, voted for by farmers. Traders have only one representative. In reality, the APMC elections are like mini-political contests; of the 14 onionin Nashik, 9 are controlled by the Nationalist Congress Party or NCP. The remaining committee members are all from political parties, who, many say, use the patronage and money from theto further their political career.A classic example is the President of the Pimpalgaon APMC, Dilip Bankar, a former NCP MLA. Bankar has supervised the building of a massive new market yard, named after party chief Sharad Pawar. Its success, he hopes, will help his chances in the coming assembly elections. We met Bankar at the newflanked by the two traders, one of whom is on thecommittee. "Bankar will surely win", they said. "All traders are with him".The President of the other big, Lasalgaon, is Nanasaheb Patil of the Congress. Bankar and Patil deny that theadministration encourages cartelisation. They say they give new licenses every year. When we asked Patil to indicate from the list the new entrants, he brushed the question aside. Onion farmers we met told us that the so-called new licenses are given to the relatives and associates of the existing pool of traders.A closer look at the economics of thereveals the reason for the unhealthy synergy between traders and thebosses-cum-politicians. Traders say they are not reckless profiteers, and that they only get a 4 per cent commission from the farmer. But last year, about 4 million tonnes were traded by Maharashtra's. Multiply that by the average price of the trade - Rs 25 per kilo - and the total amount of onions sold comes to Rs 10,000 crores. 4 per cent of that is Rs 400 crores of profit, a huge amount divided between a very small pool of traders.Those margins can shoot up even higher if there is a shortage, genuine or perceived. At thewe were told repeatedly that India is heading for an onion crisis because of an unseasonal hailstorm earlier this year in Nashik that destroyed acres of crop. Yet, despite the hailstorm, Maharashtra's onion crop has jumped from 4.6 million tonnes in 2013 to 5.8 million tonnes this year, an output that has powered India's onion harvest this year to 19.2 million tonnes, a record of sorts.This is reflected in the onion arrivals at Lasalgaon, which have climbed from 9 lakh quintals in April -June 2013, to 11 lakh quintals this year in the same period. It is only in Pimpalgaon that the intake has fallen.When we asked for details of the exact amount of crop damage, no one had a clear answer. Nanasaheb Patil said it could not be measured. BY Holkar, secretary of the Lasalgaon APMC, said, "Around 10 per cent". Dilip Bankar said there is "30-40 per cent damage".Why raise these questions, we were asked bybosses. After all benefits of price rise will trickle down to farmers. To some extent this is true. But the inequality of how those benefits are divided is huge. As we saw, a very small pool of traders profit from a massive onion crop. Onion farming, on the other hand, is highly fragmented. Onion farmers have an average landholding of around 4 acres, which (with an average yield of 80 quintals per acre) works out to profits of Rs 30-35,000 for a whole year.Moreover, traders, contrary to their claims, are far better hedged against risk than farmers. The bulk of onions are bought just after harvest season at highly reduced rates, of around Rs 2-3 per kg, held in storage to be sold through the year, at increasingly higher prices.By creating a perception of scarcity and withholding stock, the price of onions goes up sharply. But the traders deny hoarding. They say what is entering theis farmers bringing in their stock.Again, the reality is more complex. When we visited one of the many onion godowns near the Pimpalgaon, the manager came rushing out, insisting that the stored onions belong to farmers. But farmers told us that they have sold 75 per cent of their stock, and that the traders hold their own stock in the name of farmers.Also, the traders' profits are not just limited, as they claim, to the 4 per cent commission from the farmer. Nandkumar Daga, President of Lasalgaon Onion Traders Association, told us once the onions leave Nashik, "we do not have any role in how it is priced in Delhi or Mumbai". But as we found in Delhi's Azadpur, commission agents say they receive consignments directly from Nashik traders, on whose behalf they sell onions to wholesalers. The profits go directly back to Nashik. The agent's 6 per cent commission comes from his buyers. As with the Nashik, Azadpur too operates as a tightly controlled cartel, making it difficult to ascertain how pricing works.So is the solution to take onions out of, as the Centre has proposed? Maharashtra has already rejected this move, the only state to do so, saying that ifare made redundant, where will farmers sell ?This is ironical. Maharashtra is one of a handful of states that liberalised its APMC laws, giving direct sale licenses to companies like Reliance and Future Group.But as the headlines every day indicate, India's big retail chains - unable to compete with local kirana stores - are closing down.K Radhakrishnan, earlier with Future Group, and who has just started a chain of fresh produce retail stores in Mumbai, says it will take a long time before organised retail grows large enough to provide an alternative selling platform to farmers. But equally, he says, "I am not vilifying the. The market yard is essential for distributing the product across the city. So we should not make a mistake by saying that these markets are not playing a role. But you need to modernize them. Give them more facilities of cold store, ripening chambers, handling facilities, hygiene, cleanliness; it's got to be upgraded."

Farmers too say they are not averse to the: it is nearby, it is familiar, it guarantees a price. But the cartels, they say, should end. "Why have only 40-50 traders? Have 400, 500 and then you will have a genuine market, "they say.For the moment though farmers have to depend on the existingsystem, whose stakeholders, locked in a cycle of mutual benefit, have little incentive for radical reform.