Thought for food

The agriculture ministry is concerned over the rising imports of food products, coinciding with a simultaneous reduction in yield of foodgrains in the country.

The agriculture ministry is concerned over the rising imports of food products, coinciding with a simultaneous reduction in yield of foodgrains in the country. As of now, agro products worth Rs 50,000 crore are imported by India to feed its people. Wheat imports by the private sector alone have touched 5 lakh tonnes. Still the country is facing a price rise because it is not just that India is no longer a foodgrain-abundant nation, but it is actually registering a decline in the yield of foodgrain production.

We have failed to check the rise in population and now we are struggling to

arrest the decline in food grain production, which can be credited to a decrease in the land available for agriculture.

Now, SEZs are also eyeing the same agricultural land. Till recently, UP was the biggest contributor to India’s buffer stocks of food grains and Bulandshahar district in the state was the single largest supplier of wheat grain in the country. Today Bulandshahar is at the lowest ebb of wheat grain production and a state as large as UP is now contributing less than 10 per cent to the nation’s buffer stock. The state government is least worried, even though it is actively promoting builders in carving out new townships over prime agricultural land.

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My suggestion is to recalculate the wasteland of India, excluding all land where agriculture is possible through modern techniques, and ensure that all future industrial and urbanisation activities, including SEZs, are proposed only on land that can grow no food.

Fully disqualified

The Supreme Court’s verdict on the MLAs of UP is a clear indictment of the then speaker of the assembly, Kesarinath Tripathi, now heading the state unit of BJP. The SC verdict is binding on the current speaker and he will have to disqualify the remaining 24 MLAs, as the whole process of defection in August-September 2003, which led to the formation of the current government by Mulayam Singh, has been declared illegitimate. If the government of the day has had no legitimacy since inception then today it also has no right under the Constitution to remain in office. Taking the verdict as disqualification of only 13 MLAs is a misinterpretation as, if the defection of the 13 MLAs who broke away first has been declared illegal, how can the remaining 24 who had joined the first set later one-by-one, claim legitimacy for their action?

If the current speaker, an MLA from the Samajwadi Party, shows any obstinacy in heeding the advice of the Supreme Court, the governor should not hesitate in taking the lawful initiative.

Ring in the new

May and June are going to be very important vis a vis decisions on key posts. The government has to make up its mind over the nominations for not only the president and vice president, but also of cabinet secretary and home secretary. The slots are all falling vacant in the coming six months as the expiry of their individual terms has surprisingly coincided in such a short period.

The writer is a Congress MP in Rajya Sabha