Frontier India Current Affairs

Written on April 30, 2008 – 7:41 am | by FICA |

BJP say’s that the UPA government has unleashed inflation as an un-legistated tax on the ordinary people. The NDA government had built huge rice and wheat stocks during its tenure. This helped to tackle inflation and shortages.

For example in the year 2002-03, the grain production fell to just 174 million tons as against the normal production of over 200 million tons. Because the government had built stocks of 65 million tons there was no shortage of food grains or inflation. Had the government not built such huge stocks there could have been starvation.

In fact we exported wheat and rice in 2001/2 [4.68 Million Tons] 2002/3 [12.46 MMT] and 2003/04 [10.3 MMT]

But maintaining high stocks was criticised by many as wasteful. But that is what saved the country then and even later.

The UPA government’s failure to procure adequate grain stock in 2004/5 was the reason why shortages resulted in 2005 itself. Despite the experience of 2002/3 Sri Chidambaram in his budget speech of 2004/5 told the nation that the country has achieved food surplus and that the farmers should switch to floriculture and horticulture!

The effect was that the UPA government could not maintain the normal buffer stock of wheat from July 2005 to January 2008 for which figures are available till now. Buffer stock is the minimum stock needed for insurance against starvation. It is not anti-inflationary stock. It is only the NDA government which had built anti-inflationary stocks.

The UPA government must bear the full responsibility for the present food crisis and inflation.