Food security per se will not be a problem. Foodgrain stocks of wheat and rice are about 8 million tonnes in excess of the buffer. These can be comfortably run down to meet the shortfalls in marketable surpluses in the districts likely to suffer output declines. The issue will be one of getting the public distribution system to reach supplies to the far-flung areas in distress. But at current procurement prices, foodgrains are costly. This means issue prices will have to be maintained at existing levels; in other words, thebudgetary subsidy for foodgrains must rise. Facile talk of reining in the foodgrain subsidy must end; (fiscal discipline must seek other directions). Consider also the fact that should the aggregate foodgrain output remain around 200 million tonnes (thanks to the rising rabi contribution, 99.9 million tonnes last year), procurement will be high in 1999-00, though below the record of 1998-99. The country has a first class foodgrain distribution problem on hand.

The spell of good monsoons could not last forever. But despite good monsoons in the nineties, the average annual growth rate of agriculture declined to 2.6 per cent from 5.2 per cent in the eighties. This is hardly the profile of an economy looking to agriculture to fuel industrial demand and growth.