S. GURUMURTHY
| The decline in production and procurement of wheat over the last three years, far from being a result of changing food habits in the South, is an outcome of successive governments advising farmers to move away from food-grains production to a more diverse produce basket, points out S. GURUMURTHY. |
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Rice still rules in South Indian kitchens. "Why wheat shortage? South Indians eat more wheat now". This is how Mr Sharad Pawar, the Union Minister for Food Security, explained away the short supply in wheat and its high prices. If what Mr Pawar says is true, it is a transformation of culinary culture, not just taste.
But have the South Indians defected from dosas to parathas, as they have from half-saris to churidar-kurtas? Statistics on whether South Indian homes are now cooking less idlis and more chapatis may be difficult to find, but, the data on how much wheat instead of rice South Indians have been buying is not.
Most offtake of wheat in the South is through the Public Distribution System (PDS) and Targeted Public Distributions System (TPDS). The data show an astonishing fall in PDS/TPDS wheat offtake by Southern States in the last few years. Yes, fall, not rise.
Take Andhra Pradesh which borders the wheat-eating Madhya Pradesh. In the year 1998-99, wheat offtake of Andhra Pradesh was 1.26 lakh tonnes; a two years later, in 2001-02, the offtake was just 7,400 tonnes out of the allotted 96,000 tonnes, that is, just 6 per cent of the 1998-99 offtake; a further two years later, in 2003-04, the offtake was even less — less than a tenth of the allotted 1.54 lakh tonnes! Andhra-ites would not bite the offer of wheat at throwaway prices. Obviously, wheat seems to be a mismatch for the Telugu delicacies of avakkai pickle and gonkura chatni!
Take Kerala next. Its offtake of wheat was 3.95 lakh tonnes in 1998-99. Two years later, in 2001-02, it fell to less than a fourth, 98,500 tonnes. Another two years down the line, in 2003-04, the offtake was still less, a third of what it was four years previously, just 1.61 lakh tonnes!
Now, on to Tamil Nadu. Its wheat offtake was 2.04 lakh tonnes in 1998-99; that fell to zero — yes, to zero — two years later, in 2001-02; two more years later, in 2003-04, offtake was a little more than 45,000 tonnes, that is, less than a fourth of four years earlier! So, in the case of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, there has been a fall of 66 per cent to 90 per cent in wheat offtake in four years.
But what about Karnataka? Its offtake was 3.95 lakh tonnes in 1998-99. Two years later, in 2001-03, it fell by about a third to 2.46 lakh tonnes. And two more years later, in 2003-04, it was still lower, 3.2 lakh tonnes, when compared to 1998-99. So parathas are only casual visitors to kitchens in the South!
Falling offftake But what about the later years? Such specific numbers as for earlier years is not readily available. Yet, evidently, after 2003-04, the offtake of wheat for the country as a whole for PDS and TPDS has been falling. For 2004-05, the national offtake of wheat was 13.1 million tonnes; for 2005-06, it was less by more than 7 per cent, at 12.2 million tonnes; for 2006-07, still less by 13 per cent, at 10.4 million tonnes.
Why the decline? Because wheat production, procurement and stocks were dwarfing year after year. This trend from 2005-06 is still not arrested. In the last three years the stock of wheat on hand was continuously less than half the minimum needed to tackle an emergency. In contrast, rice stocks were stable. With adequate rice stocks and falling wheat stocks, in March 2006, Mr Sharad Pawar instructed the Food Corporation of India to replace rice for wheat — not the other way round — for the southern States!
Mr Pawar also advised that rice instead of wheat be given for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. More, he ordered a 10 per cent cut in wheat allocations to all States! Surely wheat-eaters must have asked why rice instead of wheat. Thus came the convenient reply — which is untrue — that rice-eaters have started eating wheat, and so wheat-eaters are being forced to eat rice! But having ordered the supply of rice for wheat to South India how does the Minister say that the South Indians eat more wheat now?
Glut of grains? Why did wheat production and procurement decline? The decline was explicitly desired and, implicitly, even designed. Surprised? Now read on. Year after year, from 2002-03 to 2004-05, both the NDA and the UPA governments told the Indian farmers to produce — believe it — less cereals. The political adversaries, daggers drawn between them, seemed to share an un-admitted consensus. The two governments told the people, through the Budget speeches of finance ministers, that the nation was suffering from a glut of grains. Will any farmer produce when the government frightens them about a glut of grains? The design unfolded thus. Mr Yashwant Sinha, presenting the NDA government's Budget for 2002-03, told Parliament that after the Green Revolution and the White Revolution, "the country is ready for a third revolution," that is, "agricultural diversification".
Pointing to the "unprecedented levels of procurement of wheat and rice by the FCI", and the "much lower" stock needs as a big problem, he said that the report of High Level Committee on Long Term Grain Management policy — which incidentally never came — would suggest solutions. The government gave incentives to export grains to reduce the glut!
The next Budget, for 2003-04, was presented by Mr Jaswant Singh. He continued from where his predecessor left. He said: "Agriculture, the life-blood of our economy, after giving the country adequate food security, is now again at the cross-roads, as it prepares to diversify and move up the value chain."
Arguing it was win-win situation for all, he advocated a transition from grain production to horticulture and floriculture and also made a provision of Rs 50 crore for the producing more horticultural products and less food!
Diversification Then came Mr P. Chidambaram, after the NDA was voted out, with his Aam Aadmi budget. Despite claiming to be true to the mandate for "a change in the manner in which this country is run, a change in national priorities, and a change in the processes and focus of governance" and promising to "focus on agriculture", Mr Chidambaram continued from where Yashwant and Jaswant left off.
He said: "India is self-sufficient in wheat and paddy but deficient in other agricultural produce. The time has come to encourage our farmers to diversify into areas such as horticulture, floriculture and oilseeds." Therefore "the Government proposes to launch a National Horticulture Mission." And so on.
The central message of the three finance ministers is simple — produce less of food. The system — bureaucracy, banks, media and farmers included — got the clue, and ensured that the nation produced less grains. As there was a glut, the price offered to the farmers were un-remunerative and so the farmers were forced to cut production. With one stone, both NDA and UPA governments hit two mangoes, namely, first to force the farmers to produce less food by poor procurement prices and next to moderate the inflation through low procurement prices.
Shortage and inflation But, within months, both food shortage and inflation hit back with a vengeance. Result, a country that was exporting millions of tonnes of wheat began scrambling to buy — at four to five times the price at which it had exported its wheat just a couple of years back — every bushel of wheat available in global markets in 2006. A large India's entry into global grain market actually set the global grain price on an escalator — not that, as the Finance Minister says, Indian food prices are high because of global prices.
While for the Indian government, some 50 millions tonnes of grain stock seemed excessive, wasteful and uneconomic, the Chinese government has been maintaining year after year from 2000 to 2007 — hold your breath! — over 200 million tonnes of wheat. This is about 40 per cent of the global stocks! And three times the Indian wheat production! No seer is needed to tell why it does so. China knows that if it needs food from outside no country in the world has enough land to grow food for China.
Why are the Indian leaders blind to this obvious truth? Food is not just an issue of cost of procurement or cost of carrying stocks. It is not a pure issue of economics. Cost does not matter when it comes to food. For a nation that is emerging as a global power, the leadership is suffering from myopia. No country can aspire to be a global power if it does not produce and stock food in excess of its requirements. It must supply food to others who need it. Excess food stocks at home is geo-political power. Recall the PL-480 politics of the 1960s?
Thousands of years back too, a Chanakya and a Bhishma, in their treatises on state-craft, insisted that the state granary must overflow. So, Mr Pawar, not parathas, but dosas and idlis still rule the kitchens in the South.
(The author is a corporate law adviser. E-mail:
guru@gurumurthy.net)
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