Rotting food, rotten arguments

There have been some questions raised about my estimate of the food security bill (FSB) costing Rs 3,14,000 crore or approximately 3 per cent of the GDP ('Manmonia's FSB: 3% of GDP', IE, July 6). In their article 'Correct costs of the food security bill' (FE, August 17), three distinguished economists (Ashok Kotwal, Milind Murugkar, Bharat Ramaswami, hereafter KMR) join together to demonstrate that I was barking up the wrong tree, that my calculations were all wrong and that the true cost of the FSB would only be 18 per cent higher at Rs 85,000 crore (full disclosure: I insisted that their article be published).

Read Full Story>>