Letters: Blame game

This refers to the editorial "Single market truths" (November 12). The advice to the government to desist from trying to control market price is well-taken. Egged on by the abject days of the PL-480, the "grow more food" slogan brought on a regime of incentives that gathered political overtones, with the prescribed economic tools rusting in disuse. On one hand we have record procurement at increasing minimum support price and on the other, huge amounts of stored grain rotting away. Despite bumper crops, retail prices are soaring.

Meanwhile, schemes such as the MGNREGS have led to higher wages in rural areas. National Sample Survey Organisation data show that in 2007-08 nearly 72 per cent of male migrants from rural areas sent remittances to families in rural India, boosting rural consumption. The rural demand for vegetable and milk products rose sharply because of this. You cannot always blame untimely rains and middlemen to explain serious structural maladies in the secondary agro system.

The income-trailing rural/urban population still has to make do with onions and potatoes, and the constant price escalation. A complete redesign in boosting production of not only vegetables but the gamut of perishable food items, together with storage and distribution mechanisms on a national perspective, is a vital need.

R Narayanan Ghaziabad

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