Letter to BS: Don't just preach 'vocal for local', bring it to practice

The Centre’s notification to allow import of 500,000 million tonnes (MT) of maize and 10,000 MT of milk by reducing duties on them may disturb our path towards an Aatmanirbhar Bharat. The local prices of both these products are already crashing and maize farmers are even forced to sell their crops for less than the minimum support price. India is the world’s seventh biggest producer of maize; we are supposed to export it and not import. We have got a bumper harvest of maize during rabi (May-June) season and the same is ex­pec­ted during kharif (October-November) season. But since we are al­l­owing its import, the foreign maize will come into the market before our farmers bring it in October. The import of milk also comes at a time when dairies are overburdened with an all-time high skimmed milk powder stocks.

Why did we have high import duties in the first place? To be “vocal for local”. But now the government is defending its decision to lower the import duties, saying that it needs to open up the market for a few items due to its various trade liabilities at the WTO. Covid-19 and the subsequent lockdown have put us in an unpreceden­ted crisis. We can have negotiations under the distress exemptions at WTO. We cannot put our maize farmers and dairy industry into dire straits. We should not just preach the “vocal for local” slogan, but bring it into practice.

Ravi Teja Kathuripalli  Hyderabad

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