Droughts — Govt scurries to get its act together

What verges on a scandal is that while a severe drought stalks many parts of the country, the Government is sitting on huge stocks of foodgrains and paying through its nose to hold these stocks. Buffer wheat stocks according to the prescribed norms should have been at the level of 40 lakh tonne on April 1; instead we have 128 lakh tonne, more than 300 per cent. Similarly, the rice stocks should have been 118 lakh tonne on April 1 but stood at 160 lakh tonne, nearly 36 per cent more.

And the Government is spending Rs 342 crore every month or Rs 4,110 crore annually, just to stock these grains at an annual average carrying cost of grains at Rs 1,800 per tonne.

Five months after the Government first turned down Rajasthan’s request, it has now decided to loosen its purse-strings and allow a subsidy to the tune of Rs 421 crore for Gujarat and Rajasthan against the additional foodgrains supplied to the drought-affected families in these two states.

Over the past two days, the Government has sanctioned 3.5 lakh tonnes of grains for Rajasthan — 95 per cent wheat and five per cent rice. It has also sanctioned 1.5 lakh tonne of grain under the “food for work” programme in the state. Under this programme, the state government would pay seven lakh labourers in kind over the next 107 days in lieu of work done by them.

The Government has also decided to make available 20,000 tons of wheat and 5,000 tonnes of rice at prices applicable to Below the Poverty Line (BPL) population for non-government organisations who wish to run free community kitchens in the state.

The subsidy implications of all these efforts will be Rs 240 crore for Rajasthan. The Rajasthan Government had demanded that these grains be provided to the government free of cost but the Government has agreed to provide these at BPL rates under the Public Distribution System (PDS).

Gujarat, which has a BJP government in power, however, for the first time wrote to the Centre only two days ago, demanding additional quantities of foodgrains.

The Centre has sanctioned release of 3.19 lakh tonne of grains for Gujarat — 60 per cent of which will be wheat and 40 per cent rice.

Other states which have now started drawing the Centre’s attention to the drought in their states are Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa.

Whip against visits?

Even as 58.6 lakh families in 26 drought-affected districts of Rajasthan and 53.20 lakh families in 17 districts of Gujarat are reeling under the adverse conditions, no Cabinet minister in the BJP-led NDA Government at the Centre has so far visited the drought-affected areas. The reason: There is a whip issued by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan, making it compulsory for all ministers to be present in Parliament every day — by turns — during the current session.