Rampura Phul is one of the larger grain markets of the southern Malwa and the tehsil headquarters for the Phul area.
The mandi towns of this belt, Rampura Phul, Maur, Nathana, Goniana, Bhucho, Talwandi Sabo, exist because of procurement. Their economy is arrivals, weighing, storage and transport for a few intense weeks twice a year and much less for the rest.
The arhtiya sheds, the labour, the transport and the credit all run on that cycle.
The belt is also where the cotton acreage has been falling, the water table is deep, and the agrarian distress figures are among the worst in the state.
These towns are what a procurement-based agricultural economy looks like on the ground, and if the procurement system changed they would change with it, which is why the argument about farm marketing was not abstract here.
Procurement works through the mandi. The crop arrives, is auctioned in the yard, and is bought by the state agencies at the declared price. Everything in the town is arranged around that one transaction.
An arhtiya's licence is the valuable asset in a mandi town and licences pass within families. The commission is a fixed percentage and the volume is guaranteed by procurement.
When the crop changes the towns change. Falling cotton acreage took the ginning work out of several of these towns and nothing replaced it.