Huge quantity of wheat rotting in government granaries
14 May, 2013The reply to an application filed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act has revealed that large quantity of wheat has been rotting in the granaries of the Food Corporation of India (FCI) for the past two years.
The data released by the FCI in the reply states that in 2009-10, the quantity of wheat destroyed was 2,010 million tonnes (MT) which was marginally reduced to 1997 MT in 2010-11. But the amount of damaged wheat in government granaries again increased to 2,401.61 MT in 2011-12.
The reply suggested that only in the first two months of 2013, huge quantity of wheat amounting to 932.46 million tonnes has already been damaged and categorized as non-issuable wheat. Out of these, the largest chunk of wasted wheat belongs to Bihar (306.5 MT) followed by Uttarakhand (221 MT) and Gujarat (195 MT).
In this context, it is noteworthy that as per 2012 Global Hunger Index (GHI), 43.5% of children below five years in India are underweight. Also, around 30% of Indian population lives below poverty line.