Is Self-Sufficiency in Foodgrains in Northeastern States Real? – An Analysis

Abstract

Though apparently, states like Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland appear to be self-sufficient in foodgrains, their offtake of large quantity of foodgrains from the central pool, point towards exaggeration in production data claimed by them or towards leakage of foodgrains, mainly rice and wheat. The offtake of foodgrains from central pool by NER during 2010-11 was 2.604 Mt, showing a mismatch between requirement and offtake. The states of Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura are surplus in foodgrains as per production data available as these states produced 46.9, 24.6, 58.8 and 7.4% more foodgrains over and above their requirement. However, the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Nagaland, though apparently surplus, have lifted 86.81, 84.47 and 149.97 Mt of foodgrains, respectively, from the central pool to meet their requirements during 2010-11. Offtake of foodgrains by NER states was 799.6 thousand tonnes during 2001-02 which increased to 2614.2 thousand tonnes during 2015-16. There was no offtake of foodgrains by Haryana during 2001-02 but Punjab lifted a meagre quantity of 1588 tonnes, however, a quantity of 980.2 and 890.3 thousand tonnes was lifted by these two states during 2015-16, respectively, under National Food Security Act (NFSA). During 2015-16, the procurement of foodgrains from NER was only 0.023 Mt, that too from Assam for local consumption. During the corresponding year, the procurement from Haryana and Punjab was 9.644 and 19.603 Mt, respectively. During 1967-68, the foodgrains deficit was quite large in India. The total procurement of wheat and rice were 4.04 and 8.99 Mt only, but the demand was quite high and offtake of foodgrains was 55.93 and 10.87 Mt, respectively. The government had to meet this requirement by importing of large quantity of wheat and rice from other countries.