If government winds down FCI completely, there will be a farmer revolt, says Dr Pronab Sen, former Chief Statistician

As farmers across India rise up against the Centre's farm bills, Dr. Pronab Sen, former Chief Statistician, on Tuesday said if the central government winds down the Food Corporation of India (FCI) completely, there will be a farmer revolt.

In an interview to CNBC-TV18's Latha Venkatesh, Sen said, "I think the legitimate question is that what do you do with this excess stocks and the answer is the provision that already exists, which is that FCI must do more frequent and more geographically dispersed open market operations to offload the grains."

Claiming that alternate mandis are not a bad thing, Sen said if the government do away with the oversight function, it will open to the kind of misuse that happens in any unregulated platform