GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION OF RICE IN INDIA the very nature of government's agricultural development policy of the sixties, he stated, "has led to a regionwise, cropwise and classwise concentration of production". Yet another well-known position in this regard is that of Ashok Mitra (1977). In the context of India's agricultural price policy, Mitra demonstrated that there was a clearly discernible bias against the traditional rice-growing regions in government's method of farm price fixation. Of the country's two principal grains, while, in respect of production and consumption, rice is the predominant grain in the south-eastern part, wheat is the cereal in the north-east. Considering the spectacular rise in the production and productivity of the latter and the relative stagnation of the former, the upward adjustment in the procurement price of rice should have been larger than that of wheat. However, during the initial decade of the state intervention in the market for foodgrains, the procurement price of wheat was increased much more than that of rice, due mainly to political pressures that the 'kulakh lobby' could bring upon the government. Furthermore, the weighted increase in the procurement price of rice in the traditional rice growing states in the north-eastern parts was also lower than in the northern states. This asymmetry in farm price fixation has led to concentration of surpluses and relatively larger income distribution in favour of the wheat-region on the one hand and, on the other hand, to the drain of resources of the chronically deficit states like Kerala and West Bengal, who have of late become dependent on these surpluses to feed their population. Tyagi (1979) vehemently disputed these arguments. Citing the movements in the domestic terms of trade indices and the behaviour of the wholesale price quotations for rice and wheat in the surplus and deficit regions, Tyagi stated that the so called 'kulakh lobby' in the major producing regions was weak in influencing farm prices in its favour and that, conversely, there was 'some evidence that reflected a class bias in farm price policy against the farmers'. Tyagi further alleged that the argument of 'class bias' in farm price policy was the creation of 'both the press controlled by big industrial houses and the press dominated by left-wing intellectuals'. These debates have of course become somewhat dated. Nonetheless, the issues arising from these debates bring into sharp focus some of the serious problems in public policy and have thus assumed much more relevance today. The purpose of this paper is to have a reassessment of these debates, with special reference to the rice crop. After this introduction, Section II deals with the regional