The rice traders themselves have termed the situation 'abnormal' at this time of the year and held the failure to achieve the production target of aman paddy responsible for it. The government's calculations appear to have gone wrong as it stopped sale of rice in the open market saying that the prices would come down during the aman harvest season. This has not happened.

The supply shortfall can be attributed to a number of factors. In the first place, the post-flood agricultural rehabilitation programme was a late starter due to the damage assessment process having taken a longer time than expected. As it is, aman transplantation began late into the season due to the floods. The acreage under rice cultivation was somewhat reduced and the output per hectare reportedly fell in northern and some southwestern districts of the country. So, the usual bumper production expected to follow a flood has not come about.

The agriculture experts should have had a contingency plan in place to face a situation like this. It is too risky to rely solely on nature's bounty coming in the form of alluvial deposits that lead to bumper harvest after floods. The need is to go beyond the highly cumbersome bureaucratic process and add timeliness, speed and consistency to post-flood rehabilitation.

The government, we believe, is carefully monitoring the situation where the rice market is not behaving normally. There is need to reintroduce open market sale (OMS) of rice to deal with any critical deficit that may arise due to poor supply of rice in certain places. The authorities must also prevent market manipulation through hoarding.