Food Grain Storage Management in India: Some Implications and Suggestions

It is unbelievable that an agricultural based economy might have to suffer with the problem of over production of food grains. Unfortunately it is happening in our country when the leading states like Punjab, Haryana, UP and MP have produced food grains more than expectation in recent season and that has started getting deteriorated even before the monsoon due to lack of sufficient storage capacity and ineffective distribution system. Last year 3000 tonnes of grains was wasted during rainy season and if the situation is not controlled in time this figure is likely to go higher this year. The situation is very critical and would have been accepted, if there was less production but here the case is on the other side. Various suggestions are coming from different sections of the society like; quota for public distribution system should be increased, export of grains may be increased, and there should be more production of cash crops and others. Are these suggestions viable and accepted to tackle with the problem of over production and proper distribution of food grains under given conditions. It is understood that the responsibility of providing the storage facility is lying with the Government. Many of our Members of Parliament are raising this issue but no concrete solution has been found yet. Food Security Bill might have been passed in the parliament but it is important to see how much people are going to be benefited from this. There is a need to find out some innovative solutions for the effective management of Production-Distribution-Consumption chain of food grains. This paper is an attempt to analyse the issues raised above with the support of facts and figures to find out some tentative solutions to deal with the problems of Food Grain Supply Chain Management in our country.