[Reader-list] RTF (Right to Food) Articles - 8

Rakesh Iyer rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com
Fri Aug 7 22:24:43 IST 2009 

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* Whatever happened to the 60 million tonnes? *

THE fortnight before the terrorist attacks in the United States, there was
one issue, which dominated public discourse in India. Everyone's attention
was on the starvation deaths in Kashipur. Consequently, a great deal of
publicity was being given to the Supreme Court hearings on a public interest
litigation petition that dealt with the Indian citizen's right to food. As a
result, the newspapers and magazines were also full of analysis of grain
rotting in overflowing godowns. And the airwaves were choked with
discussions on the food mountain of 60 million tonnes. Everyone professed to
be shocked with this situation of chronic hunger amidst such plenty. Does
any one remember all this? Those 60 million tonnes of food are still there
in the FCI godowns; indeed they are growing by the day. And it does not
require mention that at least one-third of all Indians continue to suffer
from malnutrition. Some economists even say that with the Government's
handling of the situation, we should not be surprised if by the end of next
year we have close to 100 million tonnes of food stocks — or 100 kg of grain
for every Indian, starving or not. Nothing has changed then since early
September. But you would not think so, considering that the issue has just
vanished from the radar of public consciousness. The reason this has
happened is, of course, the September 11 incidents in the U.S. Since then we
have had no time for anything other than those events and their fall-out in
South Asia. All other issues appear to have been erased from our media, our
public discussions and our conversations. The terrorist attacks and what
have followed are extremely important. In many ways, nothing will be the
same not just in the U.S. but in India as well. But that was not the end of
the world. Indeed, if the attacks on WTC were a crime against humanity, the
wasting of 62 million tonnes too is one against all Indians. It is not that
there have been no developments of note on the food mountain front. The
Government launched a new employment guarantee programme — the Sampoorna
Grameen Rozgar Yojana — which would make some use of the cereals. But the
only attention it received was some brief notice, which was also more in the
form of hand wringing about another scheme that was to consume more public
money. While inaugurating the launch of this programme in a village in U.P.,
the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, said something to the effect
that the people who died in Kashipur had cash at homes and had bank accounts
with money, implying that they could not have died of hunger. But even such
stupefying statements escaped notice. And the Government pegged the price it
would pay for paddy this year at a level that is going to make the problem
of overflowing godowns worse and not better in the coming months. In the
meanwhile, the Central Government has taken some decisions and issued some
meaningless orders about the stocking of grain in the public distribution
system, while the Supreme Court has given directions to State Governments
asking them to do in a few weeks what they had not done for and years months
- identifying the beneficiaries of a couple of government schemes. In early
November, the Supreme Court is going to resume its hearings on the PIL. You
can bet that our attention will be elsewhere. May be it is time we
acknowledged that the issues of the day are like fashions. They seem to
arrive, hold everybody's attention for a while and then disappear. Even when
it is about something as essential as the right to food.

C. RAMMANOHAR REDDY

E-mail the writer at crr100 at india.com

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