Some Reflections on the Food Problem in India

By T. A. PAI

Summary

T. A. Pai, identified on the title page as the first Chairman of the Food Corporation of India, delivers a sharply practical critique of India’s food policy seventeen years after independence and three Five-Year Plans. Writing in September 1966 against the backdrop of monsoon failures and continued dependence on imported wheat (notably PL-480 shipments from the United States), Pai argues that India faces a still graver problem as its population swells by another 7.5 crores in the coming five years, and that the only durable answer is to raise per-acre yields through hybrid seeds, fertilisers, assured water, and chemical pest control — a technology-led agricultural revolution rather than another round of incremental planning.

Much of the booklet is an inventory of failures Pai locates in the deficit States (Kerala, Maharashtra, Gujarat, West Bengal), in the bottlenecks of milling, storage, transport, and distribution, and in the surplus States’ reluctance to part with their grain. Loss estimates — 25% at field level, 15% in storage and transport, 5–7% in hulling, 8–12% in fine polishing, plus the Ford Foundation Team’s 120% loss figure that Pai calls an under-estimate — are marshalled to show that statistics on production are themselves unreliable and that no one in India can claim with confidence that 30% of output is marketable surplus. He singles out the failure of the Committee for Rodent Eradication, the inadequacy of minimum tolerance standards for stones and dust in rice, the over-centralisation of credit and fertiliser distribution, and the policy that allowed Roller Flour Mills to mill only imported wheat.

The argumentative spine is a liberal critique of bureaucratisation and ideological rigidity in farm policy. Pai wants the Food Corporation of India strengthened by an Act of Parliament as a genuine national agency, with monopoly procurement concentrated in the 58 heavily surplus districts that account for 48% of marketable surplus; he wants the minimum prices set by the Agricultural Prices Commission stabilised for three years and indexed to the cost of living; he wants the PL-480 wheat frozen as a buffer stock; and he wants the State Governments to stop discouraging production through perverse incentives. He is just as insistent that multiple private agencies — not Government alone — be encouraged into fertiliser, credit, and advisory services, and that an agricultural income-tax is preferable to land ceilings that prevent the bigger farmers from enriching themselves and the country.

Pai closes by warning that food policy cannot be left to ideologies, that the conflict between large-scale and small-scale farming should not be allowed to paralyse action, and that the linguistic reorganisation of States has made integrated food policy strangely difficult — a more effective policy was possible, he notes, under British rule when the country was treated as one unit. The booklet ends on a note of guarded hope in a “great awakening” among farmers and the public that, if harnessed, could carry the nation past its food crisis.

Key points

• Pai frames the crisis as a yield problem: per-acre production must rise through hybrid seeds, chemical fertilisers, assured water and pesticides, not through expanded acreage or another Plan cycle.

• He documents staggering post-harvest losses — 25% in the field, 15% in storage and transport, 5–12% in milling — and treats the Ford Foundation Team’s 120% loss estimate as an under-estimate, arguing that India’s official production figures (85–86 million tons) are not trustworthy.

• Deficit-State politics is treated as the central obstacle: Kerala, Maharashtra, Gujarat and West Bengal are economically advanced yet structurally dependent on the surplus States, while surplus States hoard grain and bargain with the Centre for concessions.

• Pai presses for the Food Corporation of India to be enabled by an Act of Parliament to function as a genuine national agency, with monopoly procurement concentrated in the 58 heavily surplus districts that supply 48% of the marketable surplus.

• He calls for PL-480 wheat to be frozen as a buffer stock under Parliamentary law rather than “frittered away”, and for minimum support prices set by the Agricultural Prices Commission to be stabilised for three years and linked to the cost-of-living index.

• On land policy he prefers an agricultural income-tax to ceilings, and wants the conversion of food acreage to non-food crops severely restricted while protecting foreign-exchange earners like coffee, tea, rubber and cashew.

• He is sharply critical of bureaucratisation, monopoly distribution of fertiliser and credit, and the rigidity of co-operative rules — arguing instead for multiple private agencies, easier institutional credit for larger farmers, and the eclipse of the middleman through better-organised marketing.

• Pai blames linguistic reorganisation of States for fragmenting food policy, observing that British-era unitary administration made integrated food policy more feasible, and ends on a guarded hope in a “great awakening” among farmers and the public.

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