INDIA
Below the Wheatline
From CHANCHAL SARKAR
DELHI
OME foreign correspondents here must be quite apuzzled. Spurred by stories of alarming drought in India they flew over to see and film starving people. But they haven't found any and are now beginning to ask if the Indian govern- ment hasn't been bleating unnecessarily, and if generous supplies of wheat (under PL 480) won't meet the situation.
In so large a country many things can be para- doxical. In October Lal Bahadur Shastri appealed to the people to try to make India self-sufficient in food. With effort, he said, it could be done. Many people were enthusiastic, lots of them gave up one meal a week. The Americans who had been cagey about continuing to send wheat be- cause of the Indo-Pakistan tension came in for heavy criticism. Yet in February the food min- ister, Mr. Subramaniam, called all diplomats in New Delhi together and told them grim tales, obviously asking for help.
Which is true? The drought last summer was severe and has been followed by poor winter rainfalls. The Government expects this year's foodgrain crop to be seventy-six million tons— twelve million tons less than in 1964-5 (which was a bumper year following two lean ones). At the moment forty-five and a half million rural people are in distress, in 126 districts of seven states (out of the total sixteen). But the crunch will not come before the period of April-June,. probably even somewhat later. Even then people will not die in the streets as they did in Calcutta in I943—one hopes never to see that again—but belts will have to be pulled in tight.
It is possible to play games with statistics. The average availability of foodgrains in the past few years has been fourteen ounces a day per head. Imports have been growing sufficiently for India to be able to feed her people thirteen ounces a day. Some economists say that if one takes the age composition of the country into account thirteen ounces are enough for average nutritional stand- ards. But it is people one should think of, not figures. And people in the poorest of the affected states, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh, have been accustomed to eating eighteen or nineteen ounces of cereals a day. Being poor they cannot afford anything else. Again, thinking of people, there is a very significant difference between the total production of rice or wheat and what is on the market. Last year 50 per cent of the wheat sold
in the market was imported. It is those who have to buy with money who are in the tightest fix. And some of the poorest people in India have to buy their food because they own no land or are engaged in casual labour which sometimes fetches as little as fifteen pence a day. These are the vulnerable groups who form the bulk of the forty- five-million in distress. Two million in the affected districts are now employed in public works and the figure is expected to mount to six million before the summer is out.
The problem is that so many are vulnerable in India, so many are on the border of subsistence that even a slight change in food prices overturns their way of life. Basirhat, a rural area not fax from Calcutta. has just seen food riots and police firing. Small paragraphs tucked away under the label 'District News' in December spoke of crop failure, of people in Basirhat selling household utensils and of crowds of people in the sub- registrar's office trying to sell land. No one noticed these warnings till violence flared up. The same was true of Kerala, which grows only half the rice it consumes. Someone once summed k up, and as such the Indian budget remains, 'a gamble on the monsoon.'
The towns suck in produce from the country btit the townspeople feel the pinch in a different way. In cities like Calcutta, Bombay. and Delhi thete is lots of money about 'black' money—on which no tax is paid. But the ordinary worker has been finding it unbearably hard. The price of vegetables has been high. Meat, fish, eggs, or fruit have become unthinkable for his family. Milk is very expensive. And always there is the constant irritation of seeing necessities like cereals, sugar or kerosene-oil disappear, of find- ing an ever-present black market and of fruitless waits in long queues.
Social workers and newspapers seem to have shied away from investigating the budgets of such families -perhaps because the truth would be too grim. The Indian government hasn't shirked its responsibilities. Statutory rationing is gradually being extended. But for monopoly procurement of all marketable surpluses and for state trading in grains there has to be a cushion of stocks.
The Indian food situation today has to be seen with compassion. By 1971, at the end of the fourth plan, the annual grain crop is expected to be 125 million tons. By then, of course, the popu- lation will have mounted to 560 million, and although rainfalls can always be capricious, one could at least discuss self-sufficiency.
President Johnson has promised assistance of up to fifteen million tons of wheat to see India through this year's drought. The Government guar- antees port facilities to handle 1.2 million tons of grain a month, and 700,000 tons in the blustery monsoon months. Does this mean that the prob- lem is solved, and that no one else need rally round? No, because grain is only a staple, its price is fairly high and the price of other things is climbing higher. Monday's budget will not help in holding the price line. If voluntary agencies
send things like baby food or vitamin tablets to the Red Cross, then they will help to protect specially vulnerable groups like children and pregnant women.
One can, if one wants, be ultra-rational about India. Of course, there are unwanted cattle and pests which destroy crops. People who are used to rice resist turning over to wheat. A defence budget of about £615 million is high (though not necessarily unproductive). But nothing in the country is wholly rational and it is no pleasure at all for India to be so urgently dependent on outside help.
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