A Flight from Plenty

Some Aspects of Employment and Unemployment in Agriculture Manabendu Chattopadhyay Inter-State Variations in Types of Tenancy H Laxminarayan S S Tyagi Progress of Irrigation in Uttar Pradesh: East-West Differences Charles Clift Tubewell Irrigation in the Gangetic Plains B D Dhawan Review of Agriculture is published four times a year, on the last Saturday of March, June, September and December' Manuscripts intended for pub- lication should reach the Editor at least six weeks ahead of the A Flight from Plenty CLEARLY, it is not only Carter's United States of America that would curb grains production to avoid the pains of plenty. Indications are that the government of this country, containing millions of semi-starved people, is about to do similarly though necessarily in a more roundabout fashion. Nature has been in a way unkind to the Janat government: to the normal politicalz- economic pressures for higher prices and profits from the landlord, trader and rich farmer lobby, there is now added the pressure of yet another bumper harvest estimated at 70 mn tonnes of kharif paddy besides the less talked about poor man's coarse grains of bajra, jowar, etc. Already there are 20 mn tonnes and more of foodgrains in the official stocks which cannot be bought because, as Jagivan Ram admitted the other day, millions have not got the purchasing power. Of these, 2 mn tonnes in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan (estimated to cost Rs 200 crores) are on the verge of complete damage. After all, only six mn tonnes are in proper permanent storage, the rest in more or less equal proportions are in hired storage spaces and under 'cover and plinth'. Indeed, we have had to go abegging to IDA for loans even to store our foodgrains. And, at last, Surjeet Singh Barnala, the Union Minister for Food and Agriculture, has summoned enough courage to announce exports of foodgrains