Who gets hurt when grain exports are banned?
Swaminathan Iyer took the words out of this bloggers mouth. The UPA government, he writes “has suddenly shifted from protecting Indian farmers against cheap imports to protecting the consumer by cheapening imports”. He is referring to the ban on rice exports (which follow the export of wheat late last year, followed by the ban on export of maize and pulses).
The April 2008 issue of Pragati called for the government to free the farmers. The UPA government did just the opposite—far from allowing Indian farmers to benefit from selling their produce at record prices, the government is forcing them to sell at artificially low prices. So who is hurting the farmer? And why is silence replacing Sainath? And next year, when farmers find themselves unable to repay their loans, the UPA government—if it is in power at that time—will simply increase payouts and write-offs.
In the end the consumers pay the farmers: only the government gets itself into the equation causing unnecessary leakage and wastage.
Unnecessary? Why, isn’t it at least helping curb inflation? Not quite. As Mr Iyer explains:
The lesson is clear. Curbing exports is a form of national hoarding. If every country tries to hoard food, food prices will naturally rise. Governments would like to believe that hoarding by traders is terrible, whereas hoarding by governments promotes the public interest. But the impact on prices is exactly the same in both cases. Indeed, when governments start to hoard food out of panic, the panic itself stokes further inflationary fears.
That is why I am not optimistic about the Indian government’s anti-inflation package. The government thinks it is improving domestic supplies and hence bringing down prices. In fact the government is adding to the global hoarding problem, and stoking panic too. So, expect food inflation to keep rising in coming months. [TOI]
It’s all very well, you say, but what should the government do when poor people can’t afford food? Well, it should buy food grain at market prices and distribute it to those who need it. That way it will least distort the price signals that farmers receive and allow them to benefit from the good times. And by spending taxpayers money in a targeted manner—only the poor will enjoy cheap food—it will spend less. That is, if the government actually wanted to address the policy challenge, and not flail about paranoid of losing votes.