Another ‘loincloth remedy’

Monday 17th January, 2022

Now, anyone could import rice, paying as little as 25 cents a kilo as duty. Trade Minister Bandula Gunawardena has said the government decision is aimed at preventing a rice shortage and bringing rice prices down. But the question is whether enough foreign exchange is available for rice imports. Minster Gunawardena himself has admitted that there are already 500 freight containers of rice at the Colombo Port pending clearance. The power and energy sectors are in a mega crisis as the country is without enough dollars to pay for fuel imports. Most industries dependent on imported raw materials are struggling to stay afloat; some of them have already gone belly up. Will the Trade Minister or any other SLPP grandee claiming to be well versed in the dismal science explain how forex will be found for rice imports?

The rice shortage and attendant price increases have come about for two reasons. One is the fertiliser shortage, which has resulted in a sharp drop in the Maha yield, and the other is hoarding by big-time millers and wholesalers. The government is not willing to change its fertiliser policy, which has run into stiff resistance from resentful farmers, and it is too impotent to take on the Millers’ Mafia, which has become a law unto itself as politicians benefit from its largesse during elections.

Rice imports are only a band-aid remedy. True, any essential commodity has to be imported in case of a severe shortfall in the domestic supply thereof, but such measures must necessarily be short-term; the government does not seem to know when it will be able to stop rice imports. Unless the fertiliser crisis is resolved urgently, rice imports will go on until the end of time, and several other agricultural products, too, will have to be imported. The country’s food security will be pie in the sky in such an eventuality.

SLPP MP and former President Maithripala Sirisena has, in an interview with Siyatha TV, said he wonders whether there is a move to discourage farmers from engaging in agriculture and drive them to sell their lands to private companies. Multinational corporations have already acquired large extents of land for commercial agriculture here; prominent among them is an international banana producer, which got a foothold here during the previous Rajapaksa government. The present-day leaders seem relentless in their efforts to turn this country into a banana republic.

Meanwhile, let Sirisena be told that his family is also responsible for farmers’ woes; his brother, Dudley, is one of the millers who make unconscionable profits by exploiting both the farmer and the consumer alike; and his relative, State Minister Siripala Gamlath, is also a miller thriving at the expense of the poor paddy farmers and hapless consumers. Shouldn’t he put his own house in order instead of shedding copious tears for farmers and consumers?

Whether the government is working according to a secret plan to make farmers fed up with agriculture, one may not know, but its wrong agricultural policies are fraught with the danger of discouraging the farming community. When farmers suffer massive yield losses, and cannot recover production costs, much less redeem their valuables pawned to raise funds for cultivation purposes, they will be left with no alternative but to vote with their feet. Some of them have already done so, and unless this trend is arrested urgently, the country’s economic crisis will worsen with more dollars having to be spent on food imports. Besides, rural poverty will increase exponentially, and the farmers reduced to penury are likely to migrate to urban centres looking for jobs that are not there. The country may run out of dollars at this rate, and therefore the people will have to starve if imports are promoted as government policy at the expense of the local production of main food items. (We might achieve self-sufficiency only in turmeric!)

The government’s decision to promote imports as a solution to the rice shortage instead of addressing the root causes of the problem is like using a loincloth to control diarrhoea, as a local saying goes.