NOTES 53 procurement agencies. With the active connivance of the wholesale trader the 'farmer' thus developed the capacity to withhold supplies. In this background it is no wonder that the government failed to achieve its target of procurement of 8 million tonnes. Instead of suitably revising its procurement and monetary policies to meet the challenge, the government as guided by its pro-landlord policy, used this opportunity to enrich this class by pumping more money into their hands in the rabi crash programme, bonus scheme, etc to the tune of Rs 150 crores. We would further point out that, even where programmes and policies are well-defined, problems relating to surplus, procurement and pricing cannot be solved without the active co-operation of the people. The successful implementation of the unified procurement and marketing • scheme in China required the entry of the political cadres into the countryside, the classification of the producers into poor, middle and rich categories in order to carry through different strategies for all these sections. Food Imports The political compulsion of the ruling class in India to ally with the feudal and semi-feudal classes, drives it more and more into the camp of imperialism. Accordingly, food imports were negotiated and arranged from the US on term payment. For the government, imports were necessitated by its procurement failure. Besides, the government was relieved from making domestic purchases involving spot cash. Because of the outwardly strained relations between the US and India, the latter approached the US through the Aid India Consortium in June last, and the response was warm. This, of course, involves the risk of wire-pulling of this country's foreign and domestic policies by US, especially our policy viz-a-viz Pakistan. Hence our view is that the failure of the bourgeoisie in India to confront its feudal partner leads to its compromise with imperialism. It must be remembered thus that, this is to protect the interest of the landlords, hoarders, and speculators, and all this is happening in a year when the production at home is hundred million tonnes. Having miserably failed to procure grain in this way the public distribution system also collapsed. Ration quotas were considerably slashed in many places. The public distribution system has so far does not covered even one third of the population. About 40 per cent of the fair price shops are accounted for by Kerala, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Gujarat. The whole policy of the government is to procrue that much amount of grain which is sufficient to distribute in problem areas, mainly urban centres, leaving the people in the rural areas to fend themselves and the most optimistic estimate of the government has never crossed the fifteen million tonnes mark which is sufficient to cover a population of just hundred million. On the other hand, the issue price of grains distributed through fair price