“Quality is an Illusion”: Effects of Market Power on Expert and Farm Infrastructures

I examine the fallout of quality's unstable nature on expert and farm infrastructures in India's FCV tobacco sector, drawing on a state regulatory expert's frustrated claim that quality is a mithya (illusion). Quality serves dual functions: as an objective scientific parameter that experts use to standardize tobacco leaf grades, and as part of a price discovery mechanism influenced by market fluctuations. Through ethnographic fieldwork in tobacco-growing regions, I show how dominant buyers strategically exploit quality's instability to serve their commercial interests, detaching quality from technical specifications. I contribute to STS literature on quality standards by demonstrating how quality's instability has material consequences—suppressing farmers' remuneration, undermining expert authority, and making public and farmer investments redundant. I also engage debates on the “crisis of expertise,” arguing that expert frustration stems from contradictions in pursuing market-oriented science for social outcomes. Under neoliberal restructuring of state–market relations, farmers lose confidence in expert guidance focused on improving quality rather than protecting their interests, breaking down traditional expert–farmer relations that supported agricultural improvement. My analysis reveals broader tensions between scientific expertise and market forces in contemporary agriculture, demonstrating how commodifying quality metrics undermines both expert authority and farm livelihoods.