Children Starve, Food Grains Rot, Leaders Shed False Tears!

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says that he is ashamed of India’s child malnourishment status (42%), which was reported to be double that of sub-Saharan Africa. He was releasing a national survey report by an NGO on hunger and malnutrition.

Well, what he should really be ashamed of is that this is happening when thousands of tons of food grains rot in Food Corporation of India godowns every year for lack of proper supply chain facilities.

Dr. Singh has played the major role in liberalizing the country’s Industrial sector since the nineties and harps time and again of the economic  growth rates.

But what good is it Mr. Prime Minister if half the country’s population does not have food to eat?

What good is it if we have sky scrapers and fly-overs and mega malls in the cities when the farmers who feed the country, kill themselves in hoards, because they are not able to feed themselves?

The Agriculture minister of the country is more interested in the BCCI than the FCI, for he knows where his treasures lie. And it’s definitely not in the granaries of the villages.

The media raises the hue and cry for a couple of days when such studies come to light. But in times when they have enough scams, scandals and IPLs to get protruding eyeballs for their ads, the sunken eyes of the malnourished Indian child easily passes in to oblivion.

Has the media checked what happened to the tall promises made by the ministers when the rotting issue was first reported over an year ago? Has thousands of godowns sprouted up all over the country?

One would like to argue that these are issues of bottle necks in the Indian economic system. But I totally disagree with this. I am of the opinion that these are sins of commission than omission.

The logic is very simple. It’s for the smart people to make sure that the grains produced by not-so-smart people lie to rot, so as to keep food prices artificially high and to sell their own produce at premium prices. Or else why should grains rot when the demand is high, as indicated by the prices.

Please don’t speak of lack of storage spaces. There are millions of empty stomachs in this country. Lets fill them first!

And the surplus lets export. India’s has such huge land area, most of which is so cultivable, that our agriculture sector alone is enough to make us a rich nation. But then the riches will be distributed far and wide among the masses and not with a few cunning hands.

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