THE Centre and the states are currently engaged in a predictable mutual blame game on food inflation. The truth is that both have contributed their own acts of commission and omission which have led to the current crisis. That the current crisis — a scenario of over 20 per cent inflation in food articles — could have largely been avoided only makes the failure of governance in this instance worse.
It is not as if the government did not know that trouble was brewing. That the monsoons were going to be deficient was known more than six months ago. Sugar, another commodity which has seen a record surge in prices, was going to face a huge shortfall in production, a fact which was known months ago, and sugar mills had even taken some preventive action by importing raw sugar in bulk. That 10 lakh tonnes of sugar so imported are still stuck in ports because of bureaucratic hurdles only compounded the problem. And the actions like UP chief minister Mayawati's move to ban the ' import' of raw sugar into the state, to placate the lobby of sugarcane farmers, only added fuel to the fire.
But there are long- term as well as shortterm reasons for the growing pressure on food prices. India's agricultural output has been growing painfully slowly. And, while there is talk of free trade with other nations, the internal market for food articles continues to be enmeshed in red tape and regulations, giving middlemen and hoarders free reign. A mission- mode approach, with concrete steps to increase food production, while removing infrastructure and other bottlenecks in the food market, is the need of the hour.
