Less than a month after UPA ally and NCP chief Sharad Pawar said that he was “pained” by Prime Minister’s remarks that his coalition partners make it “more difficult” for the government to take “difficult decisions”, the Union Agriculture Minister has shot off a letter to Manmohan Singh to register his protest against the government for sidelining his suggestions on export policies regarding key agricultural and allied items.
Pawar was learnt to have handed over his four-page letter to the PM on Tuesday after a meeting of the Union Cabinet.
In the line of his fire are ministries of Commerce, Textiles, and Food under Congress’s Anand Sharma and K V Thomas, respectively. He has protested against the stance adopted by these departments on issues related to exports of casein (a milk product), cotton and sugar.
The continuation of ban against fresh registration for cotton exports, which was decided by an informal GoM on Monday, appears to have been the trigger for Pawar putting down his protest in writing. While Pawar has been pushing for cotton exports, Textiles Ministry has been against fresh export permissions to augment cheap supply of cotton for domestic textiles industry.
“Compromising the interests of small cotton farmers to benefit the textile magnates is indeed a travesty of justice. Moreover, it defies logic to permit the consumer of cotton (textile industry) to dictate terms to cotton producer,” Pawar is learnt to have written suggesting that cotton farmers should not be “subsidising” the industry.
This has also come in the backdrop of a continuing stand-off with Thomas regarding the modalities of sugar export, with Pawar feeling that the Food Minister’s “negative approach” against expediting sugar exports at times of high global prices has resulted in a lost opportunity on export earnings. “The negativity prevalent in the department regarding sugar exports can be best gauged from the fact that though the decision to allow sugar exports of 10 lakh tonnes was taken on March 26, no orders regarding the same have been issued till date,” Pawar has written. He has cited how the cautious approach on sugar exports cost the government Rs 1,500 crore of export subsidy later to help the sugar industry pay arrears for sugarcane farmers during UPA-I when he was the food minister.
Pawar has registered his objection to the continuing ban on export of milk products like casein. Sources confided that the Cabinet Committee on Prices is likely to take up a proposal soon to review the ban.
Pawar has also contended that the minimum support price for various agricultural items are by and large insufficient to recoup the farmers’ costs and efforts and open exports will help farmers get better prices to recoup their input.