India is unable to take advantage of a huge export opportunity in fruits, vegetables and flowers because 40 per cent of fruit and vegetable produce in India are wasted. The government agencies like APEDA and ministry of food processing have failed to provide adequate infrastructure and today nobody knows who is responsible for preventing this wastage.

It is a matter of shame that we have still not come up with basic storage and transport infrastructure. Although India has the cold chain for meat, dairy and frozen foods, the same for fruits and vegetables is non-existent. Of the 19.54 million tonnes of cold storage facility in India, 82 per cent is dedicated to potatoes and only 0.2 per cent for other fruits and vegetables.

About seven years ago, the then finance minister Yashwant Sinha, in his budget speech, had announced a grand plan of setting up of a nationwide cold chain in India, but nothing has come up so far. And recent ventures by private retail chains to set up nationwide agriculture storage infrastructure are facing unnecessary opposition from narrow-minded political interests.

The writer is a Congress MP in Rajya Sabha