98 SOCIAL SCIENTIS F Lord Linlithgow brought to India, these largely unimple-merited ideas for British markets. His Royal Commission on Agriculture recommended commodity surveys to determine whether the imposition of similar controls over Indian agricultural markets was appropriate. However, nation-wide acts covering the colonial power's requirements of Indian export crops (for grading, and weights and measures for cotton and groundnut) long preceded these commodity surveys which are still being carried out to this day.3 So did|the drafts in the early 1930s of provincial legislation to regulate markets. In practice, information on market structure and conduct was simply unimportant as a rationale for regulation. The Acts and Assumptions In 1933 the Madras Commercial Crops Markets Act appeared. Its most important purpose was to crack the nut of local autonomy in administering marketing, to reduce and standardize market charges. "Attention was drawn to the difficulties of applying legislation to zemindari markets and to markets under the control of municipalities .... It was pointed out. . . that the essential question was the regulation of the condition^-of trading in the market and of market charges and this need not interfere with zemindar rights."4 Despite the need for standardization of behaviour, the control of markets by local governments was stressed. Committees representing various interested groups involved in marketing (pace Smithfields but including producers) were to be formed under district control. These committees would appoint managers, organize the markets, present their accounts and settle disputes. Market organization assumed the forms of physical infrastructure (sites and facilities), revenue generation (licences and fees) and information. Prices were to be collected and broadcast on the radio. The Act covered three crops—cotton (in practice confined to Tirupur in Coimbatore district), tobacco (Krishna and Guntur districts) and groundnut (South Arcot and Guntur districts)— though four other were added later. This act was in force until 1962 when it was replaced. In 1957 an expert committee of the government had examined its working and recommended the extension of regulation to all crops. The intervention was set on its expansion path. This legislation was actually conceived and enacted in the absence of much of the information' that was supposed to justify it.5 There are conflicts between the need for authoritative control and that for participation of various interests, between the need for