The most immediate sufferers of tardy procurement — as has also been reported from Haryana — are farmers.
The slow pace of paddy procurement in Punjab and resultant farmer anger are a reflection of both short-term official incompetence and long-term policy failure. Last year, during the marketing months of October and November, government agencies bought 185.3 lakh tonnes (lt) of paddy. This time, they have purchased just 71.6 lt so far, mainly due to lack of storage space for the new crop. That, in turn, has been because of 119 lt of rice, out of the total 124.1 lt milled grain from last year’s procured paddy, still remaining in Punjab as on October 1. With the Food Corporation of India (FCI) not moving this rice out of the state, Punjab’s warehouses have little capacity to accommodate fresh grain. Millers, too, are hesitant to lift the paddy brought by farmers that they process on behalf of state agencies. They aren’t sure the latter would take timely delivery of their custom-milled rice.
The most immediate sufferers of tardy procurement — as has also been reported from Haryana — are farmers. Heaps of un-lifted grain lying in the wholesale mandis has prompted them to also slow down harvesting of their already-ripened paddy in the fields. Union Food Minister Pralhad Joshi has assured farmers that the Centre “will procure each and every grain” from them “by November-end”. But the more the procurement gets extended, the narrower would be the window for sowing the next wheat crop. Given that farmers need to sow before mid-November in order to harvest by early-April before temperatures start soaring, they may now take greater recourse to stubble burning to clear their fields. Delayed paddy procurement could, then, cause collateral damage to air quality in north India, including the national capital.
But it isn’t just poor short-term planning — someone has to answer for the FCI’s inability to move out last year’s rice procured from Punjab and Haryana — that is to blame. Equally, if not more, serious is the policy failure to wean the two states away from paddy cultivation. Unlike wheat, there is no dearth of other states — whether in the north, south, east or central India — that can grow rice enough to meet the country’s consumption requirement, and also in a more environmentally-sustainable way. The fact that the paddy area in Punjab and Haryana touched a record 32.4 lakh and 16.4 lakh hectares respectively this time only testifies to the absence of political will to address the real problem. India is today producing too much rice, which is borne out by the all-time-high opening stocks of 386.8 lt in government warehouses as on October 1. The solution to this problem has to start from Punjab and Haryana. Creating more storage space is a short-term expedient at best.
