This refers to Kunal Bose’s analysis “Second green revolution is the need of the hour” (March 22). Mr Bose may have justifiably used the Economic Survey and the special 14-page document in The Economist on food policy to analyse issues within India. But he may have also presented a skewed view of things. Stating facts that are not wholly unknown to readers of this subject, Mr Bose has harped on a culpable theory of what is and what ought to be. If he is aware of what ought to be in his last few paragraphs, can we take it for granted that, as stated the framers of these policies that he had been talking about in over 13 paragraphs of analysis were not aware of them? Let us not take a view of issues and simplify them in our own way. After all, policy makers are also policy givers. We may not understand their language in totality but that does not give us the liberty to hold them to anything. We live in a country where the number of people going hungry every night is equal to the population of the US. Our population is also 20 times that of the UK and we have a GDP that is just 10 per cent of the US. So, quite undeniably, we ought to understand the compulsions of our policy makers. In very general terms, only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches. So let us not be proud and pontificate.
Nirmalya Mukherjee, Kolkata
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