What an awful headline. It makes it sound like the India banned exports not to control domestic inflation but to deliberately deepen global food prices.
Depends on how you read it. It's an abbreviated headline format, where important but small words are omitted to have a punchier and shorter headline.
It's common with headlines like "<event> to <effect>". Like "rising interests to cause concern for home owners". I.e it's about causality/effect, not intention.
To make it more explicit, what are the omitted words?
Probably something like "[That] India bans wheat exports [is expected] to deepen [a/the] global food crisis". Or maybe [risks] or [could lead]?
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Completely understandable action, like Indonesia's ban on palm oil exports, the country's people come first.
Terrible for all food importers though. Wars with looting and pillaging (with global impact), famines, social unrest, pandemic. Going off headlines one might think we're a century off.
I find it interesting that every one of these articles says they're the second largest wheat producer. Which is a bit misleading. They're "only" the 10th biggest wheat exporter.
Obviously, but it's being mentioned in the context of global wheat supplies. Only a fraction of India's production is exported and thus relevant for the rest of the world.
The reason is right there in the article! For your edification;
A scorching heatwave has curtailed wheat output in India and domestic prices have soared to an all-time high.
"We were expecting curbs on exports after two to three months, but it seems like the inflation numbers changed the government's mind."
Rising food and energy prices pushed India's annual retail inflation up towards an eight-year high in April, strengthening economists' view that the central bank would have to raise interest rates more aggressively to curb prices.
Wheat prices in India have risen to a record high, in some places as high as 25,000 rupees (£263) per tonne, way above the government's fixed minimum support price of 20,150 rupees.
But a sharp and sudden rise in temperatures in mid-March means the crop size could be smaller than expected at about 100 million tonnes or even lower, a New Delhi-based dealer with a global trading firm told Reuters.
The government had estimated production would hit an all-time high of 111.32 million tonnes.
Not a fan of the PM, but the gazette calls out a couple of exceptions, including: "Export will also be allowed on the basis of permission granted by the Government of India to other countries to meet their food security needs and based on the request of their governments"
I presume the list is 0 length right now, and it'll be interesting to see if it ever expands.
As always with this type of news, impossible to find a link back to any sort of government source… does this include atta/maida? Like will Indian diaspora / restaurants be able to get their naan wheat?
I suppose the headline was changed as the current headline is completely fine. Either way this is bad for the world food situation and it's something that India shouldn't do as it's going to cause a knock-on effect where the burden of export will ripple to other countries, who will also want to shut down exports. Eventually resulting in mass starvation for the import-dependent countries.
Because a little harm spread around is a lot less worse than major harm on a very few places. India exists in a globalized world. It's time it learned to adapt to that rather than pretending it's an island.
Well, you're seeing one of the problems with systems based on consensus expressed in grocery prices now. Refusal to adopt the faith for any reason increases harm exponentially.
The notion that, if everyone just went along with things, then they would be better off, is why some people argue that free will doesn't exist and more to the subject matter, it's also why agriculturally productive land has been more and more centralized and industrialized, over the last few decades especially, in the name of creating this giant system of global food distribution which so many are now reliant entirely upon and which has also now just shit the bed.
Wheat importers are facing high prices, not starvation. The biggest importers like Egypt, Turkey and Indonesia all have significantly higher per capita incomes than India and are better equipped to deal with higher prices. As TFA notes, exports will be allowed to countries that need Indian wheat to meet their food security needs.
Interesting then that India, which resisted globalization of critical agricultural products, is likely going to come out ahead... The idea that we should solve a problem caused by globalization with more globalization is bizarre. Just as we have seen with PPE, masks, microchips, and other critical goods, relying on foreign countries to put their own interest second is a recipe for disaster.
You're missing the point. They don't come out ahead in the long term. This just harms farmers in India in the long term. By making the grain cost less the profit is reduced for the farmers and it further discourages investment in mechanized farming which stops decreases in the carbon dioxide produced per bushel of food and reduces profits.
If prices go up, the hundreds of millions of Indians living near the poverty line will be at risk of being physically and mentally stunted due to malnutrition. It's harder to directly quantify the impact of that, but it will reduce economic productivity over the next 60-80 years due to permanent effects on children. Seems like India made the right call, in my opinion.
