Too Many People, Too Little Food

On the office wall of Home Minister Gulzari Lal Nanda is a map of India that bristles with small flags, each representing a town where there has been serious unrest over the nation's growing food crisis. Every week brings more flags to the map: protest demonstrations in Bombay, a rampaging crowd in Rampur, looting of grain shops in Agra. India's Reds are busily preparing "mass agitation" to exploit the food shortage. Said Communist Party Chairman S. A. Dange: "A government that cannot feed the people should quit."

At the heart of the problem is the inability of India to expand food pro duction quickly enough to keep up with a population that is increasing at the rate of 10 million a year. For each of the past three years, total food output has fallen below the 1960 level of 81 million tons, and even in the case of the improved rice crop, deliveries to consumers are off by more than 16%, owing to merchant hoarding and an inefficient marketing system.

Deep Discontent. The impact of steadily soaring prices of rice and grain, India's staples, as well as those of vegetables, eggs and cooking oil, is felt hardest by the urban dwellers, who make up 18% of the population. A man and his wife, both employees of the Kerala state government at a combined wage of $84 per month, well above India's average, these days are forced to halve the family's milk consumption, cut out eggs entirely, and stretch the supply of rice by eating it in the form of soupy gruel. A Calcutta schoolteacher who makes $55 gives his children two meals a day, but can afford to eat only once daily himself. Worse off still is the hapless Bombay textile mill worker, who must overspend by $6 monthly and make up his deficit by borrowing from money lenders at 9%.

The discontent of such people has led the government to predict widespread food riots soon. Food Minister C. Subramaniam blames hoarding by wholesalers for much of the trouble, declares that some merchants have actually bribed railwaymen to slow down food trains so that temporary scarcities will force prices up in some critical areas, permitting them to make a killing. Recently he warned wholesalers at Hyderabad: "If you do not discipline yourselves, and continue exploiting the people, the government will nationalize the entire trade."

New Competitors. India's government has already intervened substantially. In April, "food zones," intended to confine the marketing of wheat and rice within certain organized areas, were initiated on Delhi's orders; they have not worked because, say wholesalers, the zones merely disrupted the normal patterns of trade. Next fall the government will actually go into competition with rice merchants by establishing a state trading corporation that will buy up huge portions of the crop, sell them at "fair" prices directly to retail outlets.

Such bureaucratic tinkering, of course, will not get at the root of the problem: the need to raise agricultural yields through modern methods. The U.S.'s Ford Foundation and the Agency for International Development (AID) have begun pilot programs designed to teach farmers better techniques. These programs have increased production dramatically in several small areas, chiefly through the use of fertilizer, improved seed, pesticides, credit and better implements. But it will be years before such programs can have national impact in a country that doggedly resists change. Meanwhile, Delhi leans heavily on purchases of surplus wheat from the U.S., which under the Public Law 480 program, has averaged 300,000 tons per month since 1960.

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