Game and grain heat on Pawar

New Delhi, Sept. 1: If Sharad Pawar can forget the IPL mess for a moment, perhaps he should tweet Shashi Tharoor and discuss such celestial matters as “Shanidasha” with his newly-wed former ministerial colleague.

From the game of cricket to the politics of grain, nothing seems to be going right for the agriculture and food minister.

The Pakistan “spot-fixing” scandal has again called into question the willingness of the International Cricket Council (ICC), now headed by Pawar, to crack down hard and clean up the game.

“Pawar became ICC vice-president (the VP takes over as president) with the help of the four votes from the Asian bloc, which includes Pakistan. How can he be expected to act hard against Pakistan? In the IPL mess, too, his statements and subsequent revelations of his relatives’ investments in a company linked to a team bidder did not inspire confidence,” said a source associated with cricket politics.

As if he had not bitten more than he could chew, the foodgrain controversy has now erupted around him with the Supreme Court saying it had issued an “order”, not made “a suggestion” as claimed by the minister, to distribute free food to the poor instead of letting it rot in overflowing godowns.

If Pawar needs “expert” advice, here’s some. Ajay Chandras, an astrologer sought after by the capital’s smart set, said: “Going by an analysis of the letters in his name, Pawar is under the spell of Shani (Saturn). Rahu and Ketu (the two nodes of the moon) neech mein hai (are down below). The stars specially do not augur well for him from August to October this year, that’s why he is in trouble. From 2011, Pawar’s stars will shine again.”

If Pawar believes in this sort of “advice”, help is at hand in the minister’s own backyard and he can take tips from Tharoor. The former junior foreign minister and his current wife Sunanda Pushkar had a month ago gone to a Maharashtra temple which apparently helps overcome bad luck. They had performed abhishek at the temple in Shani Shingnapur, some 30 to 40km from Shirdi, that is frequented by Shani worshippers.

It is not known if Pawar has been performing any puja but sources said he has been burning the midnight oil since Tuesday after he was ticked off by the Supreme Court over foodgrain.

His ministry is expected to file an affidavit in the court when it reopens after a two-day break. Once vetted and approved by an empowered group of ministers, the affidavit is expected to spell out the “pros and cons” of enhancing foodgrain allotments through the public distribution system.

The empowered group, headed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, is likely to meet tomorrow. Besides Pawar himself, A.K. Antony, P. Chidambaram, Mamata Banerjee, Anand Sharma, Dayanidhi Maran and C.P. Joshi are the other members of the group. Mamata is now in Kolkata.

Sources in the Congress and the government indicated that so far they were inclined to leave it to Pawar to handle what was described as a “mess largely of his making”. As the minister is flying to Mexico on Friday, the government was keen to firm up a response fast.

The government sources said it would be difficult not to respond positively to the “humanitarian” directive by the court, although misgivings exist about whether the judiciary should have “ordered” the executive to do so.

But the sources added that they were worried on the modalities of the implementation. More so as Pawar had admitted to Parliament last year that more than 11,700 tonnes of rice and wheat, valued at Rs 6.86 crore, were found rotting in Food Corporation of India (FCI) godowns.

Subsequently, a response to an RTI query filed by Dev Ashish Bhattacharya, revealed that the amount was staggeringly larger: in January 2010, 10,688 lakh tonnes were lying damaged in FCI godowns. The query elicited the information that the FCI has a total storage capacity of 256.64 lakh tonnes while its stored stock was about 218.35 lakh tonnes. Since the figures did not show a storage crunch, experts asked why the FCI could not have taken better care of the foodgrain.

“The government has left it entirely to him so that the Congress is not blamed. And Pawar is concerned only with his farmer constituency of western Maharashtra. As long as they get their remunerative prices, he is comfortable,” a senior bureaucrat said.

A member of the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council, which is re-drafting the food security bill, said Pawar and the government should have “woken up” the moment the stocks crossed 45 million tonnes (now estimated at 57 million tonnes).


The Telegraph
(With reports from Radhika Ramaseshan and Archis Mohan)