Bland talk on food prices

Inder Malhotra IT says something about the Union government that it took several months to hold a meeting of the state chief ministers on soaring food prices while these kept crushing hundreds of millions of Indians.

Sadly, the conference, too, achieved little.

There was a great outpouring of words including a shouting match between Gujarat's chief minister, Narendra Modi, and Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.

But the gathering ended with a decision to set up one more "core committee", which, as I had learned ages ago, is the classic governmental ploy to put off an issue it cannot do anything about.

Isn't it an ironic coincidence that New Delhi has appointed another committee to hold widespread consultations in Andhra over the demand for a separate state of Telangana that the Centre had virtually conceded in November? In fairness, it must be conceded that the committee appointed on Saturday is rather different because it is not confined to just a group of Central ministers but also includes several state chief ministers.

Whether their joint exertions would yield anything worthwhile remains to be seen.

What is clear, however, is that at the eight-hour confabulations at New Delhi's Vigyan Bhavan, there was hardly any sign of political will to combat the prices that have gone through the roof.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did forecast that the skyrocketing food prices, having peaked, would start dipping soon.

Everything he says merits trust, but only the coming price trends can verify his prognostication.

If political will was lacking at the Delhi conclave there was no dearth of discord.

Narendra Modi took the Centre to task for its failure to control prices and to make good its promise to the electorate to sell wheat at Rs.

The redoubtable chief minister of Gujarat is not the easiest of men to deal with.

Even so, the anger with which Pranab Babu turned on him was surely uncalled for.

Especially curious was the retort to him that the UPA-2 hadn't yet completed even the first year of its new tenure, implying that the country would have to wait for the fulfillment of electoral promises.

Does this mean that hoarders and profiteers can have a field day for nearly four years, and the government would reduce the prices of essentials only on the eve of the 2014 parliamentary poll? What makes the irate exchanges all the more incongruous is that for the last six months, Union agriculture, food supplies and consumer affairs minister Sharad Pawar has been blaming state governments for the disastrous price rise and absolving the Central government, especially himself, of all responsibility.

Throwing politeness to the winds, I have said before that of all those callously responsible for the horrendous price rise, Pawar is the most culpable.

By a delicious quirk of irony, only a day before the Prime Minister's meeting with chief ministers, members of the Congress Working committee sharply attacked the agriculture minister.

Some senior Congress leaders made no bones about their demand that Pawar should be relieved of some part of his huge portfolio.

The demand is understandable.

But there cannot be any hope for its acceptance.

For, accountability is no part of the Indian system and political ethos.

Moreover, Pawar was allotted the portmanteau portfolio as part of a political bargain at the time he joined the Congress-led UPA in 2004 even though he had walked out of the Congress in 1999 in protest against the party being led by Italian-born Sonia Gandhi.

"Compulsions of coalition politics" would make any change in the unworkable arrangement impossible.

Nothing could have illustrated Pawar's indifference to his duties more vividly than what he did after the Delhi conference.

He flew to Mumbai to spend two hours plus with Balasaheb Thackeray.

Ostensibly, his purpose was to persuade the Shiv Sena chief to let Australian cricketers play in the IPL series although many are alleging that he also had a political powwow with Balasaheb to convey to the Congress that he has other options as well.

This charge may well be inaccurate.

But there is no doubt that for the agriculture minister international cricket, with all the lucre that goes with it, is more important than the plight of the poor and even the lower middle class Indians that cannot afford to buy either pulses or vegetables.

Incidentally, the number of Indians living below the poverty line, as pointed out by the Tendulkar Committee, is vastly more than the ruling establishment was prepared to concede so far.

Far more deplorable than all this is what has been public knowledge for some days and no one in authority has contradicted.

More than 72,680 metric tonnes of sugar meant for the public distribution system were sold in the open market in September 2009 enabling sugar barons to make a profit of Rs.

123 crores in Maharashtra alone.

Pawar's intimate association with this state's sugar industry is well known and it is ruled by a coalition consisting of the Congress and Pawar's party, the Nationalist Congress party (NCP).

Does the Congress chief minister of Maharashtra have no responsibility for this monstrosity? Have the Congress president and the Prime Minister asked him for an explanation? The crowning irony is that this kind of manipulation, born of collusion between crass politicians in power and unscrupulous businessmen, is not restricted to Maharashtra.

It is much more extensive.

Furthermore, venality all across the line has subverted the public distribution system, the last, lingering hope of the poor.

On this point there was remarkable convergence between the chief ministers' meeting and the Congress Working Committee.

At both forums there was criticism of the Food Corporation of India.

Several TV channels have often shown visuals of food stocks meant for ration shops being diverted to black market.

Evidently, no one has taken any corrective action.

Pulses, the poor man's protein, have been selling at a hundred rupees a kilo.

Official explain for this has been that there is a shortage of pulses in the world market and the inexorable law of supply and demand is in operation.

Fair enough, but because a crop of pulses grows in four months, why hasn't domestic production been increased? And what is the country expected to make of this act of omission? Painful though the problem of unbearable food prices is there is an intriguing twist within it.

Sugar, cooking oil and cereals are the three items that can be hoarded and are being hoarded across the country, apparently with complete impunity.

There was a time when in similar circumstances premises of hoarders used to be raided and profiteers forced to disgorge their stocks.

At one time a people-friendly and powerful food minister, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, had brought the sugar prices tumbling down, simply by threatening nationalization of the sugar industry.

Indira Gandhi used to invoke the Essential Supplies Act.

However, perishable vegetables and fruits cannot be hoarded for any length of time.

Why are their prices so high? Neither the farmer nor the retailer is gaining anything.

The middlemen are gobbling the unconscionable profits.