MP Ritabrata writes to textiles minister, objects to use of plastic bags for food grains
The Statesman | 9 January 2026
Ritabrata Banerjee, Trinamul Congress Rajya Sabha member on Wednesday wrote to Union minister of textiles Giriraj Singh, opposing the decision to permit the large-scale use of plastic bags for food grain procurement.
In his letter, Mr Banerjee described the permission granted by the Union ministry of food and public distribution to use plastic bags for food grain procurement as “a state-sanctioned dilution of jute, carried out by the explicit concurrence of the ministry of textiles”.
Mr Banerjee has been an active parliamentarian, who had recently raised his point of Poila Baisakh being declared as the Foundation Day of West Bengal.
In the letter, he claimed that the Union government’s argument that scarcity in the supply of jute bags had prompted the permission for the use of plastic bags was dishonest in nature.
“Scarcity is not a natural phenomenon here. It is the direct outcome of policy paralysis. When prices were low, no buffer was built. When prices rose, jute was pushed aside. The stop-start governance has destroyed market confidence and destabilised livelihoods across jute belts,” Banerjee said.
According to the TMC member, the impact of such policy paralysis has adversely affected jute farmers and jute workers across the region. According to him, the entire jute belt is currently witnessing economic contraction, not because jute has failed, but because policy has turned hostile towards the sector.
“Equally alarming is the environmental contradiction. At a time when the government publicly speaks of sustainability and the reduction of single-use plastics, the Ministry of Textiles has endorsed the replacement of a renewable, biodegradable, labour-intensive Indian fibre with petroleum-based plastic packaging. This is not policy pragmatism. It is policy abdication,” Banerjee said.
His letter mentioned: “By allocating 9.22 lakh bales of plastic bags (each bale = 500 bags) across States and FCI, the Government has consciously withdrawn demand from jute at a moment when the sector is already under extreme stress. This decision did not arise in a vacuum. It is the culmination of two years of policy failure by the Ministry of Textiles.
For successive crop seasons, jute farmers were left unprotected as prices remained below MSP for extended periods. Procurement operations were episodic and cosmetic, entirely disconnected from any credible buffer stock or stabilisation framework. No reserve norms were defined, no release discipline was communicated, and no effort was made to convert surplus years into security for lean periods. Farmers were forced to sell cheap, while the Ministry looked away.