August 12, 2010

Thank God for Supreme Court in India!

I would rather have the Supreme Court govern the country than the politicians:-). Offlate, the Supreme Court seems to be pulling up the government and getting sense into their heads. This is a very good thing, only I wonder if they will then have very little time to hear the pending cases of undertrials languishing in various prisons across the country.

I refer to today's judgement by SC to distribute the food grains to the hungry, "free". I am so glad to see this news. Its such a stupid ironical twist to see rotting grains in godowns that no one will use and >250 million hungry mouths simultaneously co-existing in the country... Can we do anything more stupid?

All these years, the political class and officials hid behind the term, "buffer stocks" and justified the rotting grains in godowns. Today, with a hyper active media watching and having free access, the pitiable state of our godowns and warehouses and the inefficiencies of the Food Corporation of India have been completely exposed. I wonder why we cannot have privatisation in these sectors. Why can't business houses get into storage and distribution of food grains in the country. PDS can work closely with private firms and ensure optimum distribution than it exists now.

In my opinion, reform in post harvest technologies and logistics is going to be critical for India in the coming years. Else, all the toil by farmers and contributions from agricultural institutions will come to naught and we will only see rising food prices and more shortages. 

2 comments:

Meena said...

We may need many more supreme courts. Storage of wheat, procurement by the government is another big scam.

Unknown said...

This is a revolutionary step forward.

We have a pathetic PDS in place. If the Distribution system did improve, i wonder if there would ever be a buffer stock.

We can leave the distribution with
government, but privatise the procurement and storage.

Then hopefully an efficient storage system will put pressure on the government to distribute more effectively.