At the beginning of 2010, food grains amounting to 10,688 lakh tonnes had already been damaged and in the last ten months the figure has only risen. While we enjoy our meals, food grains are rotting away, in godowns and out in the open. Is India now ready to feed a million mouths or will the food grains rot further?

By R SARATH KUMAR

Be it Punjab, Haryana or Uttar Pradesh; the truth is that an air of negligence has settled over India like a shroud. India is a country of ironies -- on one side we have  farmers who have been starving to death, committing suicide for various reasons and on the other we have food grains rotting in godowns.

As of January 1st of 2010, food grains that could feed the mouths of about six lakh people over a period of 10 years that amounts to the figure of 10,688 lakh  tonnes of food were found damaged. Also, reports suggest that in a span of 10 years from 1997 to 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 were damaged in different godowns of the Food Corporation of India.

Even in July, there were nearly three lakh metric tonnes of food grains rotting in the open, in the state of Madhya Pradesh and the orders of the Supreme Court was  that it should be distributed to the poor. And yet, throughout the nation, the sad state of affairs continues, showing India in a poor light.

This implies that in the past 10 months, almost negligible steps have been taken to control the situation. On Aug 12, 2010, the apex court had orally observed that the government should ensure free distribution of food grains to poor instead of letting them rot. However, in the written order the court said “The government shall supply food grains to poor at low cost or no cost.” The direction was passed after a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed by the civil rights group, People’s Union  for Civil Liberties (PUCL) in the Supreme Court regarding corruption in Public Distribution System (PDS) besides the rotting of food grains in the godowns of Food  Corporation of India across the country.

As early as 2002, Jean Dreze, a development economist had suggested saying “These food mountains have become a resilient national embarrassment. Grain could  be withdrawn from these warehouses; it would be effectively costless, since the production and procurement expenses have already been incurred. In fact, using idle food stocks for mid-day meals would save money, by reducing storage costs.”

One of the first reactions to the Supreme Court order was from Food and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar who said that it is not possible to implement the  Supreme Court order. “The government will do all it can to provide affordable food to those below the poverty line but cannot implement the Supreme Court’s  order to give free food grains to the poor,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said recently. The Prime Minister said figures vary but if one takes the Tendulkar  committee’s estimates, 37 per cent of the population is below the poverty line. “How are you going to give free food to such a large segment of the population,”  he asked. “But to say that we can give food grains free, quite frankly, if we do that on a large scale you would destroy the incentive of our farmers to produce  more food and if  there is no food available for distribution what will you distribute?” In our nation the term ‘free’ seems to have found no place in the government, even if it means  feeding homeless, helpless and the hungry.

A Supreme Court appointed committee, set up to do a reality check on the Public Distribution System (PDS) mechanism, had described it in July as “inefficient and  corrupt”, plagued by black marketing and unofficially run by a “vicious cartel of bureaucrats, fair price shop owners and middlemen.”

Supreme Court judge, Justice DP Wadhwa who headed the committee mentioned in the report to the apex court that ` 28,000-crore subsidy annually spent by the government was pocketed by those with vested interests.

As of early September, there were 6.52 crore families registered under the BPL (Below Poverty Line) who are each eligible for 35 kg of food grains a month. Rice is distributed to BPL families at ` 5.65 a kg, while wheat is allotted at ` 4.15 a kg.

While the nation views the abandonment of food grains and as voices of concern come from the entire length of the country, here is the Father of Green  Revolution, Dr M S Swaminathan sharing his concern with us: “The Government of India had initiated a Save Grain programme over thirty years ago, but unfortunately this was discontinued a few years ago, in spite of my protest.

Soon after our Independence in 1947, the government built grain storages in major ports like Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Kandla and Visakhapatnam. This was  necessary since we were then leading a hand to mouth existence. Unfortunately similar efforts in building modern grain storages in major centres of production were absent. This is why we are facing the present tragedy.

In 1965, when I knew that India would start producing large quantities of wheat, I got the Indian Agricultural Research Institute of which I was then the Director,  step up its work to design and disseminate Pusa Bins which farmers can erect for the safe storage of grain. When I became Secretary, Agriculture and Rural  Development in 1979, my first task was the initiation of a rural godown scheme for developing a national grid of godowns for the safe storage of food grains. As  Chairman of the National Commission on Farmers, I recommended six years ago, that we should put up at fifty different locations in the country ultra modern grain storages, each capable of storing one million tonnes of grains. Also my centre in Chennai has been promoting the establishment of grain banks in tribal  areas for storing traditional grains. The Food Corporation of India obviously did not get the needed financial support for establishing a national grid of modern  grain storage structures,” says Dr Swaminathan.

In the book ‘Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal’, startling disclosures are made on how food grains and food articles are wasted all over the world. In our  own country, the stake holders are yet to focus attention on this urgent issue. Also in 2008, Subodh Kant Sahai, Minister for food processing, made the shocking disclosure of $12 billion in losses of agricultural produce owing to the absence or shortage of post-harvesting infrastructure, such as cold storage chains,  transportation and storage facilities. In India there are only around 500 warehouses, but only two third of the food grains are kept in government’s own constructions while one-sixth is kept in open with the remaining kept in hired facilities.

To give or not to give remains unclear. While millions of poor might go to sleep hungry, what happens now, with incessant rainfalls and winter soon approaching?  Will we see the numbers increasing or will there be some direction to improve storage facilities?