Letters: Big Scam Indeed!

[Guest guest]

Dear Online Friends,

In a poor country like India where 50 per cent live

below the poverty line and most of whom have wheat as

their staple diet, soaring high prices affect their

nutrition adversely creating malnutrition and disease.

This is just some food for thought, isn't it?

S. M. Acharya

 

 

Letters to The Editor, TOI.

Sir,

Big Scam Indeed!

Vandana Shiva has rightly condemned the centre’s

decision to import 5.5 million tonnes of US wheat at

Rs. 1300 as against the minimum support price of Rs.

700 per tonne that the government gives to the Indian

farmers for wheat procurement (TOI September 17) . It

appears that the government seems to have scrapped the

scheme to procure wheat to build buffer stocks under

pressure from the US.

The foreign companies then lifted wheat from the

Indian farmers directly at Rs. 650 per tonne creating

shortage of wheat that sent the wheat prices soaring

in the Indian market, cheating both the farmers and

the millions of Indians whose staple diet is wheat.

Now the same sort of wheat is being imported at the

double the price at 1300 per tonne costing the public

exchequer and the poor Indian consumer a whooping loss

of Rs. 8000 to 9000 crores this kharif season.

The biggest surprise is that this has happened when

Sharad Pawar is the Union Agriculture Minister. I must

blame even the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh whose

government has become a party to such a big scam that

has cheated both the Indian farmers and the general

public while filling the pockets of middlemen,

commission agents and the US traders.

 

S. M. Acharya,

Founder President,

Save India Association,

155 St. Patrick’s Town,

Pune 411 013, Tel: 020-26870204.