ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL SCENE 5 cure the available marketable surplus of fbodgrains, faulty distribution system and the uninterrupted operation of blackmarketeers and greedy traders supported by the cheerful expansion of black money, have sent food prices skyrocketing. Whithin the last one year the official index of wholesale prices, despite its gross underestimation (the index is indeed a fraud on the people) registered a rise of 21.5 per cent, raising the index to 240.8 during the week ending June 30, 1973. Government spokesmen have made pathetic attempts to explain away the massive inflationary spiral by describing it as a 'global phenomenon5 or 'passing phase' or something that was caused by extraneous circumstances such as Bangladesh liberation, Indo-Pakistan war and so on. It is increasingly clear, however, that the staggering problem of price rise cannot be diagnosed without examining the basic elements in the economic system and the dynamics of its functioning. The wrong economic policies pursued by the government resulting in decline in industrial growth rates, substantial unutilised capacity, imbalances created by the so-called green revolution, mounting burdens of an inequitous tax policy, deficit financing, wasteful public expenditure, growth of monopolies, increasing foreign collaborations in even non-essential commodities, high-handed operations of hoarders, speculators and blackmarketeers, inefficiency of the public distribution system and the black money economy operating alongside the open economy, are some of the deeper causes for this malady. Food Debacle 'Takeover9 of wholesale trade in wheat and the oft-repeated assertions about intensifying the procurement effort notwithstanding, the total procurement of the rabi crop, mostly wheat, will be far below 5 million tonnes out of the targeted 8.1 million tonnes. This compares with the 5.6 million tonnes procured last year. Three-fourths of the target are to be met from the northern states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Except in Punjab, procurement is lagging behind miserably. In a spell of breast-beating and self-criticism, it has been admitted that not many Congress landlords and rich peasants have sold their crop to the government agencies. A rich bonanza of Rs 150 crores spent on the emergency rabi programme, and the bonuses and incentives that fattened the rural rich did neither help the production of food nor its procurement. Wherever hungry mobs have raided foodgrains shops, they have invariably found grain, not necessarily in small quantities. A hungry population, empty fair price shops and large stocks of hoarded grain with private traders have co-existed in the lean year of 1972-73. The traders are the very people who offered to procure more than the government can dream of—seven to ten million tonnes—of course at high procurement prices of Rs 76 to Rs 85 per quintal. The government which appeared