Memories of the mid-1960s rice shortage in Tamil Nadu

Back in the mid-1960s, Tamil Nadu faced a spell of acute shortage of rice. Politically, the rice problem of the 1960s had cost the Congress dearly as the party was thrown out of power in the 1967 Assembly election. Since then, the party has not been able to come back to power. The then Chief Minister M. Bakthavatsalam is still blamed for the way his regime had handled the crisis.

Even as the country, since the late 1950s, began implementing well-meaning suggestions of the Ashok Mehta panel that went into causes of price rise of foodgrains during 1956 and 1957, it encountered back-to-back drought in 1965 and 1966. The production of rice in the two years went down by about 20%, compared to 1964-65, when the country produced 39 million tonnes. Foodgrains were still imported from the internat