This is refers to the edit “Poor Economics” (July 29) that contains distorted interpretations of certain facts and figures.
The edit says, “…the government, on the contrary, intends to augment the storage capacity to hoard even larger quantities.” This is a distorted interpretation because:
- The total requirement under the proposed National Food Security Act, which has been approved by Empowered Group of Ministers, is estimated to be more than 60 million tonnes.
- In order to meet this requirement the country would need proper storage space across the country.
- Even if the open storage system i.e. CAP (Covered and Plinth), generally used to store wheat, is a scientific and cost-effective way to store foodgrain, effort is on to store all foodgrain stock under covered storage facility to reduce even minimal losses.
- For the purpose of meeting the gap between available covered storage capacity and requirement, the government has already launched the Private Entrepreneurs’ Guarantee (PEG) scheme.
The edit also says, “The government also seems confused on the issue of the location of the stock — should they be stored closer to where they are consumed or where they are produced?” This again is misleading because any policy decision for the creation of infrastructure has to be properly deliberated on keeping in view its future usefulness, current costs, benefits and so on. We feel that silos should be optimally distributed between wheat procuring and consuming areas.
Chandrasen Kumar,
Institute of Food Security
Food Corporation of India, Gurgaon
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