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Price-rise: PM blames it on middlemen; new panel to revamp Essential Commodities Act

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee today said a group of officials under the cabinet secretary would be constituted to suggest suitable amendments for giving more teeth to the Essential Commodities Act, empowering state governments to deal sternly with hoarders and black-marketeers of essential commodities.

Unveiling a five-point programme for discussion at the chief ministers conference convened by him today in New Delhi to review the price situation in the country, Vajpayee said there was immediate need to review the Essential Commodities Act.

This will lead to effective action against those causing artificial shortages, engaging in malpractices not only in foodgrains trade but also in items of mass consumption like vegetables, onions and potatoes.

The official group would suggest steps ''to improve the enforcement mechanism'', the prime minister said.

Other steps announced by the prime minister to control prices included restructuring of Cabinet Committee on Prices, setting up of a special cell under the cabinet secretary to monitor price and availability of essential commodities, encouragement to setting up cold storages on priority basis, storages of essential commodities and early establishment of the National Crop Forecasting Centre.

Vajpayee said the proposal was under consideration of the agriculture ministry but action on this needs to be completed expeditiously.

''We should make full use of satellite-based remote sensing capabilities of the department of space and the computer network set up by the National Informatics Centre covering all the districts,'' he said.

The prime minister said, ''We should undertake a nationwide programme to encourage establishment of efficient and cost-effective cold storages to minimise the high percentage of waste, coupled with a related programme to develop food processing industries,'' he said.

He emphasised the need for stable and continuous export and import of agricultural produce and favoured market intervention on the part of the government to provide relief to consumers.

He decried the exploitative role of middlemen in supply and distribution of essential commodities. This was evident even in the recent spurt in prices -- the difference between wholesale and retail prices of onions, potatoes, pulses and edible oils was sometimes in the 200 to 300 per cent band, he said.

The increase in purchase prices for the consumer did not necessarily mean better sale price for the farmer. Prices of agricultural produce ''often fluctuate so wildly from year to year due to market manipulations by middlemen, that sustainable crop planning became near impossibility'', he said citing the recent agitation of groundnut growers in Karnataka.

In this context, Vajpayee said there is an urgent need to protect Indian farmers from the vagaries of the monsoon and free both farmers and consumers ''from the clutches of unscrupulous middlemen''. This is a collective challenge to all the governments and political parties in India, he added.

The prime minister favoured forging collaborations between farmers and marketing cooperatives in contiguous urban-rural areas to benefit both the primary producer and the consumer.

For this, institutions like the National Dairy Development Board and state-level cooperative marketing federations should be encouraged.

He asked the states to improve working of the public distribution system network ensuring greater participation of the people. Vajpayee suggested framing of medium- and long-term strategies for better management of prices of essential commodities.

For this, the Centre and the states should ''evolve a common approach'' on production, supply, distribution and export-import of agriculture produce.

Vajpayee said the large-scale wastage of agriculture produce should be minimised by expansion and modernisation of rural infrastructure -- roads, transport facilities, warehouses, markets and cold-storage chains. Various rural and agriculture development schemes had to taken up by the Centre and the state governments as an integrated step, he said.

The prime minister, however, emphasised the need to increase production of all essential commodities to provide food security to the growing population of the country.

In this context, he expressed concern over the declining per capita availability of pulses from 69 grams per day in 1969 to only 35 grams per day in 1998. ''This is a warning signal,'' he said as pulses had been the main source of protein for the poor and middle-class Indian families. But the production of pulses had not made much headway fluctuating between 12 to 14 million tonnes a year.

Similarly, the prime minister said the production of edible oils had declined from 25 million tonnes in 1996-97 to 22.2 million tonnes this year.

UNI

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