Accusing the UPA government of mismanaging the food buffer stock and price situation, the BJP said the government would pay a heavy price for this.
NEW DELHI: Accusing the UPA government of mismanaging the food buffer stock and price situation, the BJP on Monday said the government would pay a heavy price for this and the first test will come in the Karnataka assembly elections.
Talking to reporters here, party spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad claimed the nation under UPA rule “is increasingly entering into an era of food insecurity”. Accusing the UPA of transforming the “food surplus country into a food scarce nation”, Prasad cited Planning Commission figures to say that the country’s per capita availability of food grains has fallen to the levels of 1970s.
He further emphasised the gravity of the crisis by saying that during the NDA regime, particularly during 2000-03, India had the highest record of buffer stock of food grains. The situation was so comfortable that food grains worth Rs7,000 crores were even exported in 2003, he added. “Now we have a situation where essential food articles are to be imported by paying many times higher than the minimum support price paid to the farmers.”
Citing instances of mismanagement, he said sub-standard wheat was imported at higher prices whereas Indian farmers were paid less during procurement. When the price of pulses was shooting up, the government, disregarding all directives, granted exemptions to unscrupulous exporters to export Indian pulses abroad and earn huge profit. The matter was raised by the BJP and this led to the institution of a CBI inquiry. In fact, the government has never been serious about the management of food economy. The situation is so bad that prices of essential food articles have shown an alarming rise even after the presentation of the so-called pro-people budget in March, he said.
The BJP said that the government must come out with a policy statement that should include mention of long and short-term measures to contain this crisis. He asked the government to find a ‘holistic and systematic’ solution for overcoming the problem stalking the food insecurity scenario.
s_rajesh@dnaindia.net
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