While Food Grains Rot, Food Inflation is on the Trot

Today there were three news items on the front page of TOI-Ahmedabad Edition (dated 15/05/2012) which I found related to each other and contradicting too. While the main headline news appears as ‘Veggie prices surge 61%, fuel 7.2% inflation in Apr’, the other two news items appear under News Digest as ‘Center to give Rs. 700Cr for drought relief work’ and just below it ‘Storage space crunch for bumper harvest’! Source for all the three news items emanates from the Centre i.e. the Central Government!

It is indeed ironical that while tonnes and tonnes of food grains rot in the age old godowns and in the open storage in Punjab and other parts of the country, millions go to bed without a square meal! As reported in the news item – the FCI has warned that unless the government distributes 750 lakh tonnes of food grain, there will be no storage space for the bumper harvest being currently procured! At the same time Centre has decided to give Rs. 700 Crore as reimbursement to the state for expenditures incurred on drought-mitigation work.

The government really needs to look into its wayward policies and to put into place a system for timely collection, secured storage and distribution of food grains so as to make it available to the citizens at reasonable price and to ensure its availability to the poor citizens thru PDS without involvement of the middlemen. Looking at the current state of affairs of food grains management, it is clear that the policies, if any, are just for name sake and food grains either end up rotting in the godowns or is pilfered or pushed into the hands of the middlemen. And, the poor hungry mouths and food inflation keep on rising.

When it comes to vegetables and fruits, the prices have skyrocketed and are now very much beyond the reach of an ordinary Indian. The reason for exorbitant increase in prices is not known- whether produce is less, or people have started eating more or the middlemen have spread their network thru political backup for generating party funds! Out of these three probabilities, involvement of middlemen appears to be the major reason for hike in veggie prices too! I guess that.

madhukarmohan@gmail.com