The Hindu : `Overflowing godowns speak of PDS collapse'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Feb 20, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Andhra Pradesh

`Overflowing godowns speak of PDS collapse'

By Our Staff Reporter

KURNOOL Feb. 19. The general secretary of All India Kisan Sabha, has said the reason for overflowing foodgrain godowns in the country was collapse of public distribution system.

Addressing the meeting after inaugurating the three-day State-level conference of Andhra Pradesh Raithu Sangham, affiliated to the CPI(M), here on Wednesday, Mr. Varadarajan said during the Ninth Plan period, the agriculture sector recorded a growth rate of 0.2 per cent, which was less than the growth rate of the population.

Mr. Varadarajan said despite the poor performance of the agriculture sector, foodgrain stocks in the country rose from 20 million tonnes in 1998 to 63 million tonnes in 2001 indicating that something was wrong with the consumption pattern.

Large-scale unwanted import of agriculture items also contributed to the piling up of foodgrain stocks.

Quoting the agriculture scientist, M.S. Swaminathan, the AIKS general secretary said if no measures were taken to arrest the trend of negative growth in agriculture sector, the country would end up as the biggest importer of foodgrain in the world by the year 2030.

Mr. Varadarajan recalled that the CPI(M) and other Left parties had vehemently opposed the liberalisation policies in 1993 arguing that they would result in crippling of domestic agriculture sector. "But none listened to us then and instead, argued that the agriculture imports of the country would go up. After 11 years, we had a spate of suicides among farmers, agitations for remunerative prices, mounting agriculture loan defaulters and migrations''.

`Irrigation neglected'

The CPI leader, K. Ramakrishna, accused the State Government of neglecting the major irrigation sector by refusing to allot funds. Even the paltry sums allotted were never spent on the projects.

As a result of the long neglect of the irrigation projects, the severity of drought was increasing year by year.

He took exception to the proposal to close down the units of Andhra Pradesh Seeds Development Corporation and imposition of four per cent tax on seeds.

The invitation committee president, T. Narasimhaiah, S. Malla Reddy, M.A. Gafoor, Venkat, T. Ramakrishna and others were present.

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