The Hindu : New Delhi News : Yerrannaidu calls for hike in paddy MSP

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Friday, Nov 23, 2007
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Yerrannaidu calls for hike in paddy MSP

Special Correspondent

Plea to fix support price on a par with wheat at Rs. 1,000 per quintal

‘Anti-farmer policies distort market forces resulting in distress sales’
FCI spends Rs. 760 for handling one quintal of rice every year

K. Yerran Naidu.

NEW DELHI: Leader of the Telugu Desam Parliamentary Party K.Yerrannaidu, on Wednesday urged the Centre to do away with the criteria adopted for fixing minimum support price for paddy and said that the amount should be fixed on a par with wheat, at Rs. 1,000 per quintal.

``It seems that the UPA Government at the Centre and the State Government in Andhra Pradesh were only paying lip sympathy (to the suffering of paddy-growing farmers).

Their stand on not increasing paddy MSP to Rs. 1,000 (per quintal) is not at all justified.

Why is the UPA Government not paying heed to the pitiable condition of the farmers in the country?”, he asked.

The Government, he said, was shirking its basic responsibility of taking care of the farmers, that too, at a time when their suicides were on the rise in different parts of the country.

The Centre must understand the seriousness of the situation and mitigate their suffering by bringing in the required succour, he stated in a press release.

It was a mistake on the part of policy-makers to assume that when paddy was de-husked into rice, only 65 per cent was redeemed and the rest went waste.

It was true that when 100 kg of paddy was milled, there would be a yield of 65 kg of rice.

Marketable products

But, one could not ignore that 10 to 12 kg of rice, 8 kg of cattle feed and a substantial quantity of husk were also produced and they too were marketable products.

The Government already had a scheme to modernise all rice mills to enhance yield and minimise waste. Hence, the difference between the value of wheat and rice was very marginal.

Accordingly, the difference in the minimum support price (MSP) between them should also be marginal.

“The irrational, ad-hoc, anti-farmer policies are distorting the market forces resulting in distress sale and farmers are forced to commit suicide in different parts of the country”, he said.

Re-orient PDS

Pointing out that Rs.760 is estimated to be spent by the Food Corporation of India for handling and carrying one quintal of rice every year, he said, there was also a need to reorient the public distribution system (PDS) to meet the needs of the people living below-the-poverty-line (BPL) by creating grain banks to be managed at the local level.

This, he said, would not only lead to reduction of transaction, transport, handling and storage costs and increase rural employment opportunities, but also eliminate corruption and leakages in the system and cut down on the food subsidies.

“`There is no denying the fact that high operational costs of Food Corporation of India were because of its highly centralised and corrupt administrative apparatus”.

He also alleged that while farmers need to be supported by a strong Government, protection by way of extending minimum support prices, whenever the prices went down, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance Government at the Centre was following the opposite policy.

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