At your local kirana store, the middle income upwardly mobile Indian can be found buying branded atta which he proudly takes home and also a kilo of jwar and makka which he buys daily to feed the pigeons in his neighbourhood locality square. A mile away in a squatters colony, under a plastic shed a family of 5 also buys 1 kilo of makka daily to feed their hungry stomachs. This contrast is galling and touching. In a radius of 1 km you can find two sets of families: one who uses jwar to feed pigeons and the other who uses jwar to feed themselves. What is more important, take your pick: animal feed versus human feed. Yet, India continues to export coarse grain- seen as the poor man's staple food- even in a year when prices are expected to rise and production of coarse grain is expected to fall in the country. This is a twist of irony of fate which is playing with the lives and nutrition of millions of poor Indians. Coarse grain is the poor man's feed in India as compared to animal feed overseas. In a year when food prices, especially cereals like wheat and rice are shooting up through the roof, millions of below poverty line (BPL) families subsist on coarse grain grown in fair amount in India. Export of coarse grains severely hits BPL families in India as agro inflation is a major worry today. For a family of five which earns Rs 100 per day from menial jobs like cleaning streets, digging trenches or crushing stones, affording basmati rice at Rs 40 per kg seems like a distant dream forget about buying even cheaper variety of rice at Rs 16 per kg. The canvas of agro inflation is much bigger than rice, wheat, barley and the rise in coarse grain prices is mainly due to demand-supply gap and increasing shift to coarse grain due to increase in price of wheat/rice (bar/pie chart). So, why is the government still allowing export of coarse grain when facts speak otherwise. India's coarse grain production for the 2008-2009 marketing year is expected to fall to 35 million tons from a record 36 million tons a year earlier. The coarse grain crop of 2008-2009 is forecast to include 17 million tons of corn, 7 million tons of sorghum and 1.4 million tons of barley. The rise in prices of coarse grains like bajra, jwar, barley is expected to have a crippling impact on BPL people. Further, the poor monsoons have also negatively affected crop cultivation. Inflation in coarse grain prices will directly hit poor man and that is where the government should intervene. Coarse grains are used as feed item for poultry thus increasing price for meat items and this would have a spiraling effect on inflation as meat and poultry prices would increase. The government can intervene in a number of possible ways. First, the government can take specific steps to monitor coarse grain prices. Second, it can ban export of coarse grain. Further, the government can take steps to stop hoarding of coarse grain and disallow coarse grain in the manufacture of bio fuels. Vijay Kumar