The Food Corporation of India, set up in 1965, procures, stores and distributes the grain. Punjab and Haryana supply a very large share of what it buys.
Storage has never kept up. Grain is kept in covered and plinth storage, stacked on raised platforms under tarpaulin in the open, for want of covered godowns. Losses to rain, rodents and pests in that system have been documented repeatedly by the Comptroller and Auditor General and commented on by the Supreme Court.
At times India has held stocks far above its own buffer norms while distribution has failed to reach people who needed it.
The economics for Punjab are direct: procurement charges, mandi fees and rural development cess on the grain are a significant part of the state's own revenue, which is one reason Punjab resists any change to the system beyond what the farmers' argument alone would explain.
A state with a water crisis, a debt crisis and a diversification problem also has a revenue interest in continuing to grow the crop causing the first two.
The Food Corporation of India procures wheat and paddy in the Punjab mandis at the support price and stores it for the public distribution system.
Punjab's godowns and open plinths hold stocks far above the buffer norms in most years, and grain is lost to weather, rodents and time in quantities that are reported and not fixed.
The whole arrangement is a national food security policy that a single state's water table is paying for. That is the sentence the rest of this chapter is about.