Amid Outrage Over Hunger, Surplus Rice For Hand Sanitizers, Says Centre

Excess rice in central godowns will be converted into ethanol to make hand sanitisers and will also be added to petrol to reduce emissions, the government said today in an order seen to be highly controversial with millions on the brink of starvation since the country went into lockdown last month to fight the rapid spread of coronavirus.

Quoting the National Policy on Biofuels, which allows the conversion of surplus foodgrain into ethanol, the government said the decision was taken at a meeting of NBCC (National Biofuel Coordination Committee) chaired by Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

"It was approved that the surplus rice available with Food Corporation of India may be converted to ethanol for utilization in making alcohol-based hand-sanitizers and in blending for Ethanol Blended Petrol programme," a statement from the government read.

The Petroleum Minister said that the National Biofuel Coordination Committee has allowed conversion of a "small fraction" of excess foodgrains stock into Ethanol. An official of the petroleum ministry said the FCI has around three times more stock than the existing buffer norms.

A tweet from the ministry read:

The committee took the important decision to allow conversion of a small fraction of excess food grains into ethanol for utilisation in making alcohol-based hand-sanitizers and also for further augmenting the Ethanol Blending Program in India. pic.twitter.com/Yz0fjaqHS0

— Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (@PetroleumMin) April 20, 2020

The National Policy on Biofuels says "during an agriculture crop year when there is projected oversupply of food grains as anticipated by the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, the policy will allow conversion of these surplus quantities of food grains to ethanol". But this rule has never been invoked.

Over the last weeks, there has been huge controversy over reports that many of India's poorest were going hungry because of the nationwide lockdown, even though the godowns of the Food Corporation of India have been full.

As the lockdown started, the government promised to feed around 800 million poor people across the country for the next three months. Union minister Nirmala Sitharaman said 5 kg of wheat or rice will be given to each person free of cost, with a kilogram of pulses for every low-income family, through the public distribution system.  "No one will go hungry," the minister had announced.

But free grain under the Public Distribution System is accessible only to the people who have ration cards. For most of the migrants, this is beyond reach as they have not carried ration cards to their places of work.

There are also others who do not even own a ration card. Estimating their number to be around 5 million, experts have suggested that food under PDS be distributed to anyone who shows up. "Around 4 to 5 million people are out of the Public Distribution System as of today," noted economist Jean Dreze told NDTV.

Even ruling out illegal migrants, economists have pointed out that the PDS lists have been based on the Census of 2011 and have not been updated for several years.