I do not want to attempt here any analysis of how the rising food prices affect, the various aspects of our economic life, but one broad fact has to be recognised that it is due to the failure on the part of the government to tackle this food problem that so many complications have arisen which we are findings it is very difficult to resolve. All these have as their basic the failure of the Government to solve the food problem. Now, Sir, there are two aspects of the food situation to be considered. As has been correctly stated by our hon. Minster of Food and Agriculture, one aspect relates to production and the other aspect relates to distribution or regulation of the resources that are at our disposal. Now, Sir, I will take up these two aspects separately and show where the government has failed in its responsibility, where the government policies have been wrong policies or where the Government has failed to work out any policy at all. First, I will take the distributive aspect or the regulatory aspect. For this purpose, I will have to go back a little to the developments that have taken place during the last five or six years. Now, if we follow the developments that have taken place from the year 2000 onwards, we will inevitably come to the conclusions that the record of Government has been a remarkably poor record. The Government has been grouping in the dark. It gets happy like a child whenever there is improvement in the food situation and whenever there is more production. Sir, the bumper crop of 2003 was an extraordinary crop. It was not a normal crop. And after that year, the whole process was reversed. I will not go into details because that will take some time. But is is a fact that soon after that bumper crop of 2003-04, the Government started taking steps for putting an end to rationing, for putting an end to procurement, for putting an end to fair price shops and for doing away with the Food grains Licensing and Procurement Order of 2002, not only that, Sir, the Government even allowed certain amount of export of food grains.
