Apropos the editorial "Strategic mistake" (July 22), the continuing high cost of cereals through minimum support prices (MSP) has been made worse by the Bharatiya Janata Party's promise in its manifesto of giving a 50 per cent profit to farmers on the cost for the products procured. If MSP and procurement actually benefited the rural population, eliminating malnutrition among women and children, then it might have been worth paying taxes to fund these programmes. The sad part is that the two main procurement crops benefit only those farmers in four to five states who have a sizeable market surplus. The majority of the rural population is marginal and consists of small farmers who have nothing to sell, but have to pay higher prices for fertiliser, power, diesel, water and hired agricultural implements. The other failure of the procurement-driven Public Distribution System is the increasing stock of food grain with the Food Corporation of India.
P Datta Kolkata
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