Telangana State Planning Board Vice-Chairman B. Vinod Kumar has expressed concern over the ‘unstable’ policies of the Centre on export of food grains and the repercussions that the country is likely to face in the global arena.
Barely a month back, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced his meeting with US president Joe Biden that India was ready to supply (export) food grains to the needy countries, but he had taken the decision banning wheat exports within a month of his announcement, Mr. Vinod Kumar pointed out. He sought to know what made the Prime Minister go back on his decision when the Centre had been claiming to have surplus stocks of all the major food grains.
He expressed surprise whether the Prime Minister was not aware or have no understanding of the production of major crops in the country. His action would clearly indicate again that he had no love for farmers and was actually against the interests of the farming community. The BJP government’s agenda appears to be deceiving farmers and putting them into trouble time and again.
Mr. Vinod Kumar explained that the country was producing about 300 million tonnes of food grains every year and about 50% of it was either being consumed or being stored as part of the food security keeping the option to export the remaining food grains to the needy countries. About 100 small countries were depending on other countries for their need of food grains.
As part of its plans to export wheat, Minister of Food and Commerce Piyush Goyal had sent a delegation of the Commerce Ministry to Morocco, Tunisia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Turkey, Algeria, Lebanon and other countries very recently. The Prime Minister’s announcement banning wheat exports in the meantime has come as a shocker, Mr. Vinod Kumar said in a statement on Saturday.
