Food Security Bill would make government the largest hoarder

Consumer price inflation for May is 9.31 per cent. The biggest driver has been food inflation, of which the biggest contributor is cereals and products: 14.74 per cent in rural areas, a whopping 21.25 per cent in urban areas, together working out to 16.29 per cent overall. This is unpardonable.

The government has in its stocks 77 million tonnes of grain right now. If grain prices are still soaring above the birds of the sky, there can only be one explanation: mismanagement. Those in charge of managing our food stocks have demonstrated utter incompetence or criminal negligence. In either case, all those in charge — minister and babus — should be sacked and, in case of negligence, prosecuted for causing hunger, malnutrition, scaring an already timid RBI off reducing interest rates and, thus, contributing to economic slowdown.

One excuse the babus have for not getting rid of surplus stocks — in relation to a buffer stocking norm of 31.9 million tonnes as of July 1 — is their dread of not being able to show sufficient grain to feed the gargantuan requirements of the food security law being forced through, at the instance of the UPA chairperson. Hell hath no fury like a UPA chairperson scorned, the babus tell their insipid minister in charge of food, and, together, they do nothing, either to estimate the likely requirement of grain as per the food security law or to sell their stocks in the market to increase availability and reduce the price or at least the rate of price rise in the case of grain.

The Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices has done an estimate of the revised buffer stocking norms. The July target, it estimates, would be 41 million tonnes. Which still leaves the government with huge surpluses. And this is a danger of the food security law: of making the government the largest hoarder and pushing up food prices.