No bread? Have alcohol, courtesy Maharashtra

NEW DELHI: A group of eminent personalities from Maharashtra, including retired high court judge Chandrashekhar Dharmadhikari, social activist Anna Hazare, veteran Gandhian Thakurdas Bang and well-known writer-dramatist Mahesh Elkunchwar, have petitioned Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for scrapping a state government-sponsored policy diverting huge amount of grain to factories owned by a clutch of senior politicians of various hues for alcohol production. The petitioners found it strange that at a time when the entire country was reeling under the impact of back-breaking food prices, induced primarily by reduction in their production, the state would pursue such a policy.

As many as 36 factories, they pointed out, had been granted licenses by the state government to manufacture alcohol from grain on a massive scale. The beneficiaries of such a largesse, they said, included two sons of minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, daughter of the BJP’s deputy Lok Sabha leader Gopinath Munde, sons-in-law of former PM Narasimha Rao, NCP leader Govindrao Adik and his party colleague and Navi Mumbai deputy mayor Sunil Shashikant Birajdar.

``While the prime minister is making an appeal to increase food production, this policy, approved by the Congress-NCP alliance government in Maharashtra in 2007, and publicly endorsed by union agriculture, food and civil supplies minister Sharad Pawar, permits annual diversion of up to 1.4 million tonnes of grain to manufacture up to 500 million litres of alcohol to be turned into potable liquor,’’ the petitioners, who included 9 prominent social activists from the state, pointed out in their letter dated February 15.

``As part of this scheme, this liquor in Maharashtra will be subsidised, at the rate of Rs 10 per litre, by the state government using public money up to Rs 50 crore per factory. Though the production has begun at low levels in a few factories, at its 100% licensed capacity, this policy allows production of up to one billion litres of IMFL worth Rs 1000 billion.” Maharashtra is a food-deficit state. It produced 9.3 million tonnes 08-09, when it required 15 million tonnes.