Centre must revise wheat policy: BJP

Talking a break from its current preoccupation with the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, the BJP today slammed the UPA government’s failure to tackle the growing “economic crisis”, particularly on the food security front.

BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar demanded that the government immediately hike the procurement price for wheat in order to ensure adequate PDS supplies as well as buffer stocks and stave off the spectre of wheat imports.

Referring to The Indian Express report today, he also sharply attacked the Centre for writing to the governments of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan to stick to their procurement targets or risk PDS wheat scarcity.

Describing the Centre’s action as “ulta chor kotwal ko daante” (the culprit is blaming the victim), Javadekar said, “It is the Central government that decides on pricing and procurement policies. It is the Centre that has allowed private traders to enter the market, But instead of bringing (price) flexibility, it is now threatening the state governments.”

The Central government must “immediately withdraw the letter sent to the state governments” and instead of issuing “threats” to the states, it must revise its own pricing policy to ensure that farmers sell their wheat to the government instead of to private traders.

According to Javadekar, the government was able to procure 56 lakh tonnes of wheat on April 17, 2006, but even this proved inadequate, and wheat had to be imported after a gap of eight years.

In contrast, the procurement on April 17 this year was only 36 lakh tonnes—a shortfall of 20 lakh tonnes compared to last year. “This year’s procurement will increase dependence on high cost imports, which will create distortions of sorts where you pay more to the foreign farmers than Indian farmers,” the BJP spokesman said, reiterating the party’s demand that the government immediately hike the minimum support price (MSP) to avoid such a scenario.

Moving to another front, the BJP also criticised Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram’s reported advice to nationalised banks to “moderate credit growth for the realty sector.” In layman’s terms, this indicated a move to clamp down on housing loans that would adversely affect several sectors of the economy, Javadekar said. With interest rates on housing loans having gone up from 6% during the NDA regime to the current 12%, the demand for credit had already shrunk considerably.

Javadekar went on to say that the housing sector, which became the growth engine of employment and wealth generation besides providing much needed accommodation to millions is already hit. “The FM’s new diktat will only worsen the situation and will burden the common man more.”