union minister of agriculture Sharad Pawar's declaration that India will be importing wheat is a symptomatic of the gross food mismanagement currently prevalent in India. The decision to import coming after a seven-year production high raises an obvious question what happened to the overflowing granaries of India?

Just three years ago India had a humongous stock of wheat projected at 24.2 million tonnes (mt), today it is a meagre 4.7 mt ( see table: Stock situation). "The current import of wheat is directly linked to lesser procurement by the Food Corporation of India (fci) during 2005. "We procured only 14.7 mt just above the buffer norm of 14.3 mt,' says a senior official at the Union ministry of consumer affairs and public distribution on condition of anonymity. But Pawar has a different take.He says the present wheat stock is enough for meeting the needs of public distribution system. Which raises another question: