    
Blazewada
Bewarse Legend
Username: Blazewada
Post Number: 15907
Registered: 08-2008
Posted From: 206.53.148.241
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 09, 2011 - 7:55 am: |
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Rice left to burn in the open in Punjab godown
Chandigarh: Even as the highest ever harvest of wheat and rice is expected this year, callous administration is leading to rice literally going up in smoke in the Punjab. Tens of thousands of tons of rice stocked for the last five years in the open have now caught fire at a Punjab Agro storage area in Khamano, a large procurement market.
An incensed Supreme Court had in 2010 said if the government cannot store grain in suitable facilities it should distribute it free to the needy. However, that anger seems to have fallen on deaf ears as thousands of tons of rice stored in the open at Khamano Mandi on the Chandigarh-Ludhiana National Highway has been reduced to ashes.
Inadequate wheat storage had been highlighted in 2010 as grain rotted away in the Punjab in the open and also thousands of tons were submerged underwater in Haryana. This year it the turn of rice to go waste.
Khamano residents informed that the rice grain had been stored for the last five years in the open and there had....
been no lifting of the stock. Over the years the rice gradually rotted away, and now with the summers the rotting grain has caught fire.
Even as mountains of rice smolder away, there are tens of thousands tons more of rice in an area of more than a kilometer which is likely to meet a similar fate.
One would have thought after the wrath by Supreme Court in 2010, one would have thought that things would improve but have not improved just yet. Just three lakh tonnes of additional storage capacity have been added, while additional fifty lakh tonnes is expected to at the mandi. The grain will start to rot in the monsoon as it starts to rain because of open storage..
The perfect storm is to created for Several reasons. One of which is, it's going to be a bumper crop this time much more than it was in 2010.
Secondly, railway racks are not available to move the grain from here.
Thirdly, the grain consuming states like Madhya Pradesh and Orrisa have become self-sufficient. They no longer....
A Pat on your Back is few inches away from Kick on your Butt 
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