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

Pheeta Ram pheeta.ram at gmail.com
Fri Aug 7 23:19:45 IST 2009 

Breathless!!!!Do you need more...

On Fri, Aug 7, 2009 at 10:24 PM, Rakesh Iyer <rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com> wrote:

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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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