Is it worth sacrificing the country?

The government has announced that due to prolific monsoon rains this year the area being planted for wheat has more than doubled to 1.519 million hectares compared to 646 thousand hectares last year and so we may expect a record crop of 94.88 million tonnes early next year. Sugar cane is being planted on 81,000 hectares compared to 45,000 hectares last year. But is this a good thing? We do not possess enough storage space for so much wheat so a lot will lie out in the open to be eaten by vermin or just rot away. Exporting wheat could bring in desperately needed foreign exchange but we are not told whether it will be profitable after the government has bought wheat from farmers at the Minimum Support Price and added the cost of transport. Sugar mills in UP, the second largest producer of sugar in India, are refusing to begin crushing sugar cane because they cannot afford to buy cane at the present rates. Last year the UP government forced them to buy cane at Rs 280 per quintal but, due to depressed price of sugar, millers made a loss of Rs 16.5 billion. Millers say that they cannot pay more than Rs 225 per quintal because they still owe Rs 24 billion to farmers while farmers are demanding Rs 350 per quintal because of increased input costs. Political parties being gangs of thugs the first response of any government is with threats of violence, which is what UP has done. If much higher areas of land are given over to wheat and sugar cane because farmers are being guaranteed higher prices then there will be less land for planting vegetables, which maybe why food inflation is at over 16%. Food inflation is out of control because wages of casual labor in rural areas have shot up because the MNREGA scheme has set a floor rate for wages by paying Rs 215 per day for 100 days a year, for doing nothing. But surely it must be a good thing for such poor people to have more money? Not if they have to pay even more for milk, vegetables and eggs and not if the fiscal deficit is in danger of causing a credit rating downgrade to junk status. To fudge the books the Congress has decided to rollover $15 billion of expenses to next year's budget to meet its target of 4.8% of GDP. Each political gang is doing whatever it thinks will win it a few more seats at next year's elections. But is it worth sacrificing the country for it?