The Paradox of Northern Farming Communities

Harish Damodaran

Chapter 8 in India’s New Capitalists, 2008, pp 259-296 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract In terms of sheer quantum of physical purchases and scale of commodity movement and storage, the operations of the Food Corporation of India (FCI) are perhaps without parallel anywhere in the world. The public sector behemoth organizes procurement of about 40 million tonnes (mt) of wheat and rice every year, or close to a fifth of the country’s aggregate foodgrain output.1 Much of this is concentrated over short time spans, calling for an enormous deployment of financial and logistical resources. The bulk of wheat, for instance, is bought between mid April and the first week of May. At its peak, daily purchases touch 1 mt or more, the equivalent of 1 lakh trucks or 435 rail rakes of 2,300 tonnes each. Payments are made within 72 hours and the grain that is procured and loaded into 50 kg jute bags travels an average distance of 1,500 km. Financing these operations is in itself big business, involving an annual working capital outlay of Rs 30,000 crore, met through a consortium of 61 banks.2

Keywords: Real Estate; Personal Interview; Green Revolution; Sugar Mill; Uttar Pradesh (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-59412-8_8

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230594128

DOI: 10.1057/9780230594128_8

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().