First, a few shocking facts, unearthed by a Parliamentary Committee: Between 1997 and 2007, 1.83 lakh tonnes of wheat, 6.33 lakh tonnes of rice, 2.20 lakh tonnes of paddy and 111 lakh tonnes of maize rotted due to either lack of storage facilities or poor maintenance of stocks in the existing facilities.
As on January 1 this year, 10,688 lakh tonnes of foodgrains were found damaged in the depots of the Food Corporation of India (FCI), enough to feed over six lakh people for over 10 years.
The storage losses of foodgrains in 2009-10 amounted to Rs 228.39 crore and transit losses another Rs 182.46 crore.
The targeted public distribution system (TPDS) meant for families below poverty line (BPL) was unable to reach the poor, on account of both systemic deficiencies and the Government not having updated data.
The Parliamentary panel found that the requirements of foodgrains for the TPDS were being computed at 27.5 per cent of the population on the basis of the lowest poverty estimate of 1993-94 made by the Planning Commission, overlooking the calculations of much larger number made by Committees headed in recent years by Arjun Sengupta, N. C. Saxena and Suresh Tendulkar.
For instance, according to the Saxena Committee, the BPL population was 50 per cent, while the Tendulkar Committee's estimate was around 38 per cent with the base year of 2004-05.
Normally, one would have expected the Government and the Food Minister, Mr Sharad Pawar, to be human enough to feel for the starving poor, and taken steps, on their own volition, against the rotting of huge quantities of foodgrains in the godowns or lying in the open exposed to sun and rain.
If their tears for the poor were genuine, they would not have been waiting for somebody to goad them to distribute the grains free to those below BPL in the country, especially in the context of the FCI having, as on June 1, a stock of 57.8 million tonnes against the buffer norm of 31.9 million tonnes.
Stalling tactics
As Dr M. S. Swaminathan, the renowned agricultural expert, suggested, the Government could by this time have asked the National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad, and the Central Food Technological Research Institute, Mysore, to examine the rotting foodgrains to sort out the quantities which were inedible, or were edible only as an animal feed, so that foodgrains fit for human consumption could have been distributed free to the poor.
But no, it did nothing of the sort. Even after the Supreme Court, while hearing a public interest petition, told the Government as early as on August 12 to discharge its bounden duty to save the starving poor by the free distribution of foodgrains which were going waste, Mr Pawar began quibbling that the Supreme Court only made an ‘observation' and it was not an ‘order'.
When the apex court on August 31 emphatically drove home the point that its earlier remark was a clear directive meant to be carried out, Mr Pawar adopted stalling tactics. He first flatly stated that it was not practicable to implement the court's order, then that the quantities said to be rotting were ‘hugely exaggerated', and next, that the court's order had not reached his hands.
It was only when he was cornered by relentless castigation by angry members in both Houses of Parliament did he finally agree to ‘honour' the court's decision.
Altogether an unsavoury spectacle of a seasoned Minister like Mr Pawar tying himself into knots over what essentially was a simple and commonsense proposition.
In the bargain, he made the Government look heartless and callous, causing acute embarrassment to the Congress(I) and other partners of the UPA, making it impossible for them to come to his defence.
http://twitter.com/umeshshanmugam
No comments:
Post a Comment