I hail from India - the country which ranks at 66 among 88 in the Global Hunger Index. A nation whose child malnourishment record is worse than that of sub-Saharan Africa. A country now ranking 134 in the United Nations Human Development Index below Bhutan and Laos.
Here, issues of grave national concern get only a couple of stories spanning a modest few inches across three or four columns in newspapers but full pages are devoted to deaths of fashion models.
Here, 836 million Indians (77 per cent of the population) live on Rs. 20 a day or less. (Report by National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector)
Here, the authorities say that ‘there-is-no-money’ to feed the hungry while the country spends Rs. 10,000 crore on a new airport, more than Rs. 40,000 crore for the Commonwealth Games, Rs. 60,000 crore happily lost in the spectrum scam, Rs. 500,000 crore in write-offs under just three heads for the super-rich and the corporate sector in the current government budget. Here, funds for the hungry are hard to come by.
Economists estimate that if rice/wheat were made available to all Indians at Rs. 3 a kilo, it would add Rs.84,399 crore to the food subsidy in coming budgets. That's about one-sixth of the tax write-offs for the wealthy in this year's budget. (Other estimates place the added expenditure each year at no more than Rs. 45,000 crore).
It is the same country that has 49 dollar billionaires in the Forbes list.
I hail from India, the land of the Mahatma.
(Excerpted from (a must read article) Food security — of APL, BPL & IPL by P. Sainath of The Hindu)
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