The great food yatra
With
corporate farming becoming a priority, the average Indian farmer seems
to be fading into oblivion. Devinder Sharma points out the glaring
loopholes in the system
Two
years ago, chief ministers of various States had successfully stalled
the BJP-led coalition's move to dismantle the country's remarkable
food security network- a massive infrastructure for foodgrain procurement
and public distribution. Former Prime Minister Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee's
call to the State governments to adopt the system of decentralisation
of procurement of foodgrains and distribution, was designed with the
underlying objective of dismantling the major plank of the country's
food security system. Addressing the State chief ministers at a conference
in New Delhi on 'WTO Agreement on Agriculture and Food Management'
in early 2002, Vajpayee was actually seeking political support, by
exhorting the chief ministers to rise above party politics, for a
"consensus action plan on some crucial imperatives." Stating
that WTO and food management issues were central to the country's
agriculture and the national economy, the former Prime Minister had
spelled out an agenda for action, which in reality was nothing short
of a recipe for disaster. "As a first step, we propose to restructure
the Food Corporation of India (FCI). This year's Budget has unveiled
a new system of decentralised, State-level procurement and distribution.
Instead of providing subsidised foodgrains from the Central pool,
financial assistance will be provided to the State governments to
enable them to procure and distribute foodgrains to below poverty
line families at subsidised rates." What the Prime Minister did
not specify was that WTO makes it imperative for countries like India
to knock down the procurement machinery. Accordingly, grains for the
food buffer have to be purchased at the market price and the releases
from the buffer (read FCI) have also to be at the market prices, except
for those living below the poverty line. In the past two years, therefore,
the government has tried to "restructure" the public distribution
system as per the WTO norms by removing the "above the poverty
line" (APL) families from being a recipient of the subsidised
rations. Also, at the same time, it has set into motion a plan to
transform FCI into a foodexporting organisation. For the ruling coalitions
(and that includes the present Congress-led Coalition), the ideal
way to dismantle the food procurement system is to"decentralise"
it. The chief ministers had rejected the proposal on grounds that
they neither had the required financial resources nor the infrastructure
to procure, store and distribute foodgrains on their own. Former Punjab
chief minister, Prakash Singh Badal had argued
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