Chhattisgarh, widely known as the “rice bowl of India”, is facing a troubling situation as large quantities of paddy continue to go missing across the state. Officially, the losses are being attributed to rats, birds, termites, drying and natural spoilage. Unofficially, the scale of the disappearance suggests something far more organised. Every year, thousands of quintals of government-procured paddy are written off under the same explanations of drying loss and pest damage.
The trend is most evident in Mahasamund district, where procurement data shows that 81,620 quintals of paddy were written off over just ten months. This works out to nearly 11 quintals every hour and almost a truckload disappearing each hour, round the clock. Losses have been reported across five procurement centres, with officials insisting the figures remain within acceptable limits due to prolonged storage and moisture loss.
