Agriculture- Ought to or to be Out???
Let us have a short overview on what we did in last few years in agriculture- Today we have stock of around 47 Mn MT of wheat and rice and there is utter mismanagement in even storage of these commodities. The buffer norm says that the quantity should be 25 Mn MT in Jan and 32 Mn MT in July (peak). I don’t see any well and notable steps taken in this direction except to invent the issue of storage where these commodities are laying in open air to get perished. In 2006 and 2007 we realised the shortage of wheat so we did buying at Rs. 920 a quintal whereas the MSP was Rs. 750 per quintal. Similarly in 2007-08 we purchased @ Rs. 1500 per qtl against an MSP of Rs. 1000. In 2008-09, we exported 5.5 Mn tonnes of surplus sugar while in 2009-10, there was a shortfall in production of sugar and we ended up by importing 2.4 Mn tonnes of it. One thing that eludes me is that why we become hypersensitive once we had bad experience in last few years? Why cannot we go rationally which wor...