Articles by Leena Mary Eapen

Examining long-term trends in food inflation in India in relation to the performance of the Indian agricultural sector under various agrarian policy regimes, this paper shows that despite the slowdown in the agricultural sector and higher increases in the cost of food production during the post-economic reforms period (1992-2013), food prices were relatively low compared to the initial (1967-80) and the maturing (1980-92) stages of the Green Revolution. This, it is argued, is possibly due to more stable agricultural growth post 1991-92, higher buffer food stocks, greater coverage of the public distribution system, and better responses to food price fluctuations due to import/trade liberalisation and a more comfortable foreign exchange reserves position.

In this paper we demonstrate that the high level of wheat procurement during 2008-09 and 2009-10 at a higher minimum support price was necessitated by the difficult circumstances that the government faced, characterised by a precarious buffer stock position from 2005 to 2008. Hence, blaming larger procurement and a higher msp alone for the soaring wheat prices between 2008 and 2010 is an oversimplification of the problem. The experience with wheat procurement in the recent past suggests that foodgrain procurement at a lower msp may not always be feasible. Finally, it is shown that the inability of the government to utilise the abundant wheat stocks for the benefit of the consumers during the recent phase of high foodgrain prices was due to the poor offtake of the grain allotted to the states, not to the operations of private trade via the government's open market sales window.