Issue 45 Vol II, August 15, 2007

F E A T U R E S

Subverting Wheat Procurement
Gobind Thukral

EVERY passing day, the people are reminded that India is an emerging super power. In fact, recently the American government denied India economic aid as it was no longer a developing country. It was close to the develop world. It gives indeed a wonderful feeling  and for the moment forgets grinding poverty of over 30 crore Indians and daily run of suicide of hapless farmers. Also forget the land grabbing not only the rich and the powerful, but by the government. Ignore the grind though which crores of unemployed pass through and suffer every day. But do look around whether much of the political class in India would let it happen.

Take this case of wheat import during these two last years. India has become from a wheat surplus country to a wheat deficit country forced to import. If it is so than it proves our agriculture policies suffer from serious maladies. How would our highly experiences ministers explain that the rate of growth of farm sector not even two percent. Do they not know that nearly 60 percent of Indians directly or indirectly depend upon this sector for livelihood?  But let us look at the wheat sector alone.  Was there a real need to import and at much more cost to import wheat?

In  2007, India has an estimated production of 73.6 Million ton wheat against the production of 69.4 Million ton in 2006, when it was forced to import 65 lack tonnes of grain. This year  we are importing close to 50  lakh tonens. After managing to procure about 11 million tons out of the targeted 15 million tons from the farmers, the government has gone ahead to over imports.   The effective cost of procuring wheat domestically works out to about Rs. 11,000 per tonne, while the price that the government has paid by buying wheat abroad has is about Rs. 13,600 per tonne, all inclusive. When we observe this kind of a price difference, it is natural to question the logic of import. Couldn’t the government, through better fixing of domestic prices, and with a little more effort through Food Corporation it could have easily obtained wheat at lower rate?  Also, should we have needed to import wheat at all, when domestic production has actually gone up? It seems the government wants to pay more to Australian, American and farmers from other countries than it is ready to pay our own farmers. Indian ministers are in real love with foreign farmers.

Government’s openly stated logic for such imports it that could not compromise food stocks, part of food sovereignty. The union minister, Sharad Pawar has repeatedly stated that we have imported this wheat to ward off any danger for next year also. Does he remember that rodents eat away near that much wheat which we are importing each year?  And how protected the consumers feel.

One clear result of the government’s lopsided it that for domestic consumers. the government’s  minimum support price for wheat was Rs 850 a quintal, wheat prices in Punjab, the largest contributor of wheat and rice for the central pool have now begun to soar.  Last year the price averaged around Rs 1,050 a quintal between July and December 2006, this year the prices are already hovering around the Rs-1,000 mark.  We have earlier written that the farmers who could hold wheat stocks should do so as they could earn extra money. This is proving right.

Why is this price rise particularly when world’s wheat production is estimated in 2007 at 629.6 million tonnes, representing a significant of 5.2 percent increase from 2006?  Whenever India shows an inclination to buy wheat from the international market, the prices soar. We are only pushing prices not only India, but world over. What wisdom is that Pawar sahib?

The high cost of wheat import makes no political sense, because it threatens our food sovereignty. It makes no economic sense because there is no domestic scarcity and the imported wheat is more costly than domestic wheat. And it makes no sense in terms of health and nutrition because the imported wheat is of inferior quality. Instead of importing costly and poor quality wheat the Government should be procuring wheat domestically to secure farmers’ livelihood, national food security and the food rights of the poor to safe and affordable food. One fails to understand the rationale behind the imports when these end up pushing up prices. We do hope that the present government lead by the Congress party knows the political cost of inflation which is political dynamite.

The Government was importing wheat at $ 317 – $330 a tonne, while Indian farmers were only paid Rs.8, 500 a tonne, which is less than $200 a tonne. And it is not the case that Indian farmers are not growing enough wheat to feed the people of India. This is a decision that will aggravate the food insecurity of the poor in India and undermine the country’s food sovereignty, is being presented as a step that will protect our food security.  The Government which should protect the public interest is undermining to help global agribusiness get control of our food supply. This despite the fact that on 5 May, the Agriculture Minister, Sharad Pawar, announced that "last year, the buffer stock position was only two million tonnes, this time it is 4.5 million tonnes. I am quite comfortable about the buffer stock." But Pawar turned his own rationale on its head, and justified the current drive to import grain, saying, "However, I want to build up stocks for next year". Since the crop for next year is yet to be planted, the Minister's worry of a bad crop next year are mysterious.

Instead of doling out Rs.6000 crores to corporations for importing 50 lakh tonnes of wheat, a hike in the MSP would have fetched an even higher price to Indian farmers than what they are receiving from private companies, and also helped FCI meet the procurement target. But rather than pursue this win-win scenario for Indian farmers and the government, what we are seeing is a government that seems determined to pay a premium to grain corporations and deny a competitive price to our farmers.

There are other serious issues related to this policy of paying to outsiders and starving in Indian farmers. Food subsidy for the poor cost the exchequer Rs.23, 986 crores during 2006-07, and the government is looking for ways to slash this. One commonly heard approach is to make the system 'market-driven', a loose but well-understood code for privatisation and competition.  Look at the other moves alongside the decision to import wheat. At the behest of the Centre in 2003, most states have amended the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee Act to allow private agencies to directly procure food grains from farmers. The amended Essential Commodities Act allows storage and movement of food grains. Agriculture commodities can be traded in futures markets involving speculation. Through these actions, the preference for market-driven pricing and procurement is clear. These have also enabled private companies to corner bulk of the produce in the last two years.  How would this help the growers and the consumers remains unanswered as the Indian state has a long history of subverting pro people systems?

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Partition of Punjab
Ishtiaq Ahmed

Scholarly works on the partition of India are legion, but those focusing on the partition of the Punjab are very few. Ian Talbot and Kirpal Singh indeed have pioneering works on the Punjab partition to their credit, but much more research needs to be done to shed light on the dynamics of that cataclysmal event. After all the greatest forced migration in history with its gory tales of massacres, looting, arson, rape, abduction of women and children and other acts of savagery were essentially facets of a Punjabi tragedy.

Why and how this happened will be elaborated in my forthcoming book. On the 60th anniversary of the partition of the Punjab it is appropriate that a sketch of the main events is shared with the public. I shall in a series of articles trace the main events that culminated in the bloody division of that province.

Although ideas of partitioning Punjab had existed since at least the beginning of the twentieth century it was only in the wake of the March 23, 1940 Lahore Resolution adopted by the Muslim League that the Sikhs began to demand that the Punjab should also be partitioned on a religious basis.

Sikh religion, culture and history were inextricably linked to the Punjab -- the founder of the Sikh faith, Baba Guru Nanak (1469-1539) and his spiritual successors were Punjabis, the only great kingdom ruled a Sikh, the Kingdom of Lahore under Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1799-1839), was essentially a Punjabi state, most of the holy shrines of the Sikhs and the vast majority of their community were based in the Punjab. Therefore the Sikhs demanding partition appears to be a contradiction in terms. But they did and the question is: why? Certainly the clues are not to be found in their demographic complexion.

Unlike the Muslims who were in majority in the northwestern and northeastern zones of the subcontinent, the Sikh were not in a majority anywhere in the Punjab, not even in the central districts where they were mainly located or in their holy city of Amritsar. According to the 1941 census their overall proportion of the total Punjab population was 13.2 per cent in the British-administered areas and it increased to 14. 9 per cent if the Sikh states were also included. The Muslims had an overwhelming majority of 57.1 per cent in the British areas, which decreased to 53.2 per cent if the Sikh states were included. The Hindu population was 29.1 per cent in British districts and it declined to 26.6 if the Sikh states were included. The Sikhs were not in a majority in any of the major Sikh states either.

The Sikh argument was that India should not be partitioned, but if it became inevitable then the Punjab should be divided and the borders between a predominantly Muslim Punjab in the West and a Hindu-Sikh majority East Punjab should be drawn on the Chenab, so that East Punjab would include their holy places as well as the majority of the community. The Sikh leadership feared persecution in a predominantly Muslim Pakistan, just as the Muslim leadership argued that permanent Hindu Raj based on caste prejudices will be established if India remained united.

On February 20, 1947 Prime Minister Clement Attlee announced that His Majesty's Government intended to transfer power to Indian hands, in a united or partitioned India, by June 1948. The Sikhs reacted angrily to that declaration because no mention of a Sikh right to a separate homeland was included in it.

In the meantime, the Muslim League had launched on January 24 1947 direct action in the Punjab against the coalition government headed by Sir Khizr Hayat Tiwana, which it alleged was not representative of the Muslims of Punjab. The main supporters of Punjab Unionist Party, the Muslim landlords, had decamped and were now members of the Punjab Muslim League. The Muslim League won 75 out of the 83 seats fixed for Muslims. Two Unionists crossed the floor and joined it but it was still short of a majority by 10 seats in a house of 175.

On the other hand, the Unionist Party led by Tiwana was routed in the election. It won only 18 seats. Tiwana managed to put together a coalition government, which included the Akalis and other Panthic Sikhs who won 23 seats and the Congress which did very well by winning 50 general seats. The coalition government also included some scheduled caste members of the Punjab Assembly.

Direct action or a civil disobedience movement as the Muslim League preferred to call it lasted from January 24 to February 26. Its mass character multiplied every day and the jails were filled with leaders and cadres who defied Section 144 and were arrested. Although it remained peaceful, each day the slogans the crowds shouted became more and more menacing and threatening, striking fear and terror in the hearts of the non-Muslims.

Slogans such as, 'Pakistan ka nara kiya? La illahah illillah (what is the slogan of Pakistan? It is, there is no God but Allah), 'Assey lein gey Pakistan jaisey liya tha Hindustan' (we will take Pakistan the way we took India) were raised all over the Punjab. Some slogans directly insulted the Punjab premier in a most abusive and shallow manner. Towards the end of the agitation the demonstrators began to harass Hindus and Sikhs and made them fly the Muslim League flag on their cars and shops.

The government and the Muslim League, however, reached an agreement on February 26 according to which the agitation was called off and the Muslim League leaders and cadres were released. But those several weeks of mass agitation provoked a determined reaction from the Hindu and Sikh leaders in the Punjab who vowed not to let a Muslim League minority government come to power. On March 2 Khizr resigned. He had been badly shaken and demoralised by the abuse directed at him and by the fact that the landlords had abandoned him.

The Punjab Governor, Sir Evan Jenkins, invited the Muslim League leader Nawab Iftikhar Hussain Khan Mamdot to prove that he had a majority in the house. Although he claimed that he could muster a majority with the help of some scheduled castes members of the Punjab Assembly Mamdot failed to do so. That created a political impasse. Governor Jenkins therefore imposed governor rule on March 5 under Section 93 of the India Act of 1935. Punjab continued to remain under governor's rule until partition in mid-August 1947.

The author is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore on leave from the University of Stockholm, Sweden. isasia@nus.edu.sg  Courtesy News International Pakistan http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=67857

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