Only rats are happy with food storage

After millions of tonnes of grain have been destroyed while supposedly in storage, Union minister for agriculture and rural development Sharad Pawar concedes that this is a shame.

“I admit more needs to be done,” Pawar told the Rajya Sabha. Now the government will undertake to increase its storage capacity over the next two or three years. The government will seek help from the private sector to invest in warehousing. Moreover — and this is supposed to give us some solace — the Food Corporation of India (FCI) has suspended eight officials and initiated disciplinary action against a number of others in Uttar Pradesh.

Unfortunately, when it comes to foodgrains — from acquisition to storage to distribution — our policies have almost always been inadequate, ill-thought-out, and, to echo the minister, shameful.

The irony of the situation where granaries are overflowing to the extent that grain is rotting in godowns while millions starve to death is evident to everyone except our politicians and bureaucrats. The grain mountains are hidden by blindspots in policy, and this does not even take corruption into account.

Farmers dump grains because they do not have the capacity to hoard; the government procures them but has no place to keep them; the elements and rats take care of the rest. To complete the picture, the government imports substandard wheat to meet market demand.

Pawar is right when he says that storage capacity has to be increased — and it has to be done at a faster rate than the five-million-tonne augmentation done in the last two years. Clearly that was not enough, looking at the criminal waste which has already taken place this year: 15 million tonnes in Punjab and Haryana.

But apart from that, the government needs to sort out its policies and dichotomies between its various departments, so that more grain does not disappear between the cracks. Pawar asked to be relieved of ministries like food and civil supplies, but the fact is that there is a deep connection between agriculture and food supply and much of the rot stems from a lack of coordination between the two.

The functioning of the FCI also needs to be more closely monitored since it deals with the situation on the ground. It has taken Pawar a long time to wake up and make the right noises. One hopes he is faster when it comes to making the right moves.