Hyderabad, May 22 -- The Rohini Karthe - the traditional marker for when farmers begin preparing their fields for the Kharif season - falls on May 24. But across Telangana, thousands of farmers are still waiting at Paddy Procurement Centres (PPC), their grain weighed and receipts in hand, with nowhere to go until the lorries come. The Kharif season is two days away even as the Rabi harvest has not been fully lifted yet.

Over the past several weeks, farmers have staged blockades on highways and burned paddy bags at PPCs across multiple districts. The protests are not new. What they expose, however, is a procurement system that has been leaking at the same joints across successive governments, regardless of who sits in power in Telangana....