Section - IV - A Farce Called "E-Choupal" and the resulting Food insecurity

Globalisation of the Grain Business and the resultant food insecurity of the nation

About 2 1/2 years back itself Sainath had spoken about the "Starving and Stunting of India" as to what it does to the nutrition security of the nation and where we are heading by embracing the policies of the Bretton-Woods Institutions. Read the article for the complete details

http://www.rupe-india.org/36/app2.html.

and when we read the article written by Brunda Karat recently about the food insecurity artificially created by the Globalised Political Class led by a Minister for Agriculture who is more interested in running a Cricket Board than look at the suicides of farmers.

http://www.hindu.com/2006/06/06/stories/2006060602600800.htm

The mess in the Food and Agricultural policy of the present Government caught between the Globalised forces who represent the constituency that doesn't vote and the political party which needs to get votes from the voting marginalised who need PDS for their survival is presented in this article. Read this

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20060911&fname=Pawar+%28F%29&sid=1

E-Choupal - the Death of the PDS and food security and the rise of the "Aashirwad Atta"

If you do a Google search on the E-Choupal you would get 1000's of articles and rave reviews on this initiative by a company known for killing people with tobacco products. It is now being replicated by the IIM Bangalore (where recently e-choupal was hailed as the best thing that could have happened under the sun) at a place near Bangalore. But what I am presenting here is the other side of the rave reviews beginning with this article again by a business magazine.

http://www.india-today.com/btoday/netexcl/net20060430/7.html

We need to understand this to understand the intervention that we are doing. Blood boils at the way the government callously goes about its policies. Also these show that the scarcity of the foodgrains are artificially created because of the hoarding by the "e-choupals" and increasing the prices & most of all Business today commenting on the food insecurity!! The best thing that describes the scenario is the paragraph " Soon after the first tender for import of 0.5 million tons of wheat was contracted with the Australian Wheat Board (AWB), the international prices of wheat went on an upward swing. From an average of $131 a tonne, the AWB managed to bag the contract at $178.5 a tonne - an increase of 56 dollars a tonnes. Industry analyst, however, propose that India is deliberately weakening its bargaining position in WTO by unnecessarily resorting to wheat imports against zero duty and relaxed quarantine norms when the granary is full.

Meanwhile, the first consignment of the contracted wheat imports from Australia arrived at Chennai in the last week of April. Interestingly, in the first week of March when wheat harvesting begins in central India, AWB was buying wheat directly from farmers, at a price much lower than what it supplies to India ( one can easily replace AWB with ITC and the e-choupal initiative and think of the Aashirwad attas that are flooding the Indian market). In other words, while the government is willing to pay foreign companies an equivalent of approximately Rs 9,500 per tonne (including all costs), it allows the same companies to purchase from within the country at a much lower price - around Rs 7,000 per tonne."

What an Irony?

So what is the main grouse against these initiatives?

Even given that I have a bias against "Corporates" and their CSRs, the following are some of the blatant misdemeanours:

• The first problem is again the farmer / property-centric nature of this program with the landless again left in the lurch

• Such initiatives at some places are also implemented on a contract farming basis which does not care even for the sovereignty of the farmers or their entitlements or empowerments, in short if I were to coin a new term it is "bonded farming" akin to "bonded labourers"

• This is again resulting in the undermining of the government and the rising of the private profits in a key social sector of the nation. You can draw any number of paralells in the nation today of how these private first start on the doles of the Government and then become larger than life to then undermine the government and with it the nearly 70% of the population. We can see the parallels like:
a) The Pharmaceutical sector resulting in the Government bringing in TRIPS into the nation to facilitate "R&D" within the pharma industry
b) We can see in the recent Supreme Court ruling wherein the Court says the Government has no role to play in the Private Educational Institutions
c) We can see this happen to our Health Systems with the increasing influence of the corporate hospitals like the "Apollo Hospitals" or the "Narayana Hrudayalayas" drafting a Health policy promoting Medical Tourism (note it is Medical and not health) so that an American can come to India to have his/her Ayurvedic Massage in Kerala whereas 3000 children can die in this nation of preventable diarrhea. These Apollos and the Wokhardts in turn undermine the Primary Health Care system of India

• The marginalised are again left to the mercy of the hoarders who can sell their wheat atta in the open market in the up-market areas of the cities under the brand names of "Aashirwad Atta" where there is the population with a buying capacity. These marginalised ( also read the landless labourers) who depend on the PDS for their foodgrain supplement have to now contend with lesser grain distribution through the PDS.

• The final problem is the fatalistic thinking of the middle upper-middle class whose opinions are generated by the globalised media like Times of India. We the middle class get swayed by such initiatives which talk about "better" pricess to farmers than the Government, who get swayed about "better" medical facilities by the Apollos. We think in a fatalistic way that at least the farmer is getting that much better price. While nobody might deny that the farmer is getting a price we need to ask at what cost? Are we not robbing Peter to pay Paul? And if only we were not to be fatalistic we would have at least demanded from the Government from giving a better MSP ( Minimum Support Price) which it was perfectly capable of as it is illustrated by Brunda's article in which Government woke up very late and then started offering better prices to the farmers but it was too late. Since we think "buying" works for us middle class in the cities we think it works for everyone. We also think that a technological fix like "e-choupal" is the best solution whereas forget ( or made to forget by the media) that these are some of the most exploitative instruments











Prasanna