People's Democracy

IN the recent chief ministers conference held in Delhi, the prime minister Vajpayee stated: "Fears that lifting of quantitative restrictions would hurt farmers have proved to be unfounded." He also remarked: "Statistics showed that non-oil imports actually fell by 14.7 per cent in 2000-01."

Before examining the element of truth in the prime minister’s statement, we wish to remind him about his own speech in the Indian Labour Conference held two days back. The prime minister had remarked: "We are sometimes fooled by the statistics." The reality is that he himself tried to fool the people with the statistics that non-oil imports are declining. In fact, this is not the whole truth.

The government of India itself has tabled the following statistics in the parliament. According to these data, total value of agricultural imports rose from 1,428 million dollars in 1996-97 to 2,624.1 million dollars in 1999-2000, i e imports of agricultural products increased by more than 80 per cent in three years. The prime minister is thus not right in stating that non-oil imports have come down in recent years.

We all know that the prices of agricultural goods have fallen heavily in this period. Let us take some specific examples. The price of groundnut has fallen from Rs 1,500 to Rs 400 per quintal, of coconut from Rs 10 to Rs 3 per nut. This is also the case of soyabean and other oil-seeds. When we refer to such steep declines in prices of agricultural products, the prime minister and his cabinet colleagues like Murasoli Maran claim that the fall in prices is not the result of the export-import policy or the removal of quantitative restrictions. They affirm that the fall in prices is caused by supply and demand conditions of the related products. This implies that the prices of oilseeds have fallen because of an increase in their production. But this is contradicted by the Vajpayee government’s own statement in parliament.

In this period of a disastrous crash in prices of oilseeds, the production of oilseeds in the country had fallen. The data presented in parliament by the government and reproduced in the Table alongside prove the point. The Table clearly shows that there has been a decline in oilseeds production in recent years.

In recent years, the supply of oilseeds has increased not because of an increase in production. In fact, the increase in imports is entirely responsible for the increased supply. The import of oilseeds rose from 1.3 million tonnes in 1996-97 to 3.1 million tonnes in 1999-2000. The case of import of palm oil is far more serious. The value of imports of vegetable oil in 1996-97 was 825.1 million dollars, which increased to 2,624 million dollars in 1999-2000, which implies an increase of more than 200 per cent in imports.

This is also the case of import of milk and cream where our peasants felt the pinch of price crash in the last two years. The value of milk and cream imports has increased from 0.7 million dollars in 1996-97 to 22.4 million dollars in 1999-2000 --- a more than 30 times increase.

These are some of the facts about increased imports of agricultural products in the recent past due to removal of quantitative restrictions. Ignoring these facts, the prime minister and the minister of commerce and industry are in fact attempting to hoodwink the country by saying that imports of agricultural products have not risen in this period. Their assurance to the peasants that the removal of quantitative restrictions would not jeopardise their interests, carries no conviction. The peasants know the hard reality through their own experience. They are also not ignorant of the fact that the new agricultural policy of the NDA government, formulated at the diktat of the WTO, would soon spell disaster for many of them.

They are thus determined to meet the challenge in every possible manner. They know that they would be able to save agriculture and the country only through a continuous struggle against the BJP-led government’s policies.

(Million Tonnes)

Figures for 2000-2001 are estimates.