Opinion: Fighting Hunger, by Devinder Sharma - India Together

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Fighting Hunger

Perhaps our unfortunate people are waiting for Bill Gates, writes Devinder Sharma

November 2002 : The Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, takes a dig at the ruling NDA-Coalition: “I take this opportunity to say how insensitive the Centre has been. In August, I had met the Prime Minister with some of our chief ministers to tell him how serious the situation is.” Ironically, this was in reaction to media queries on the issue of starvation deaths in Rajasthan, while she was chairing in early November the Congress Chief Ministers’ conclave at Mount Abu, also in the same State. Sonia Gandhi did say that the hunger deaths in Baran district were a “matter of anguish” and that she was in constant touch with the Rajasthan chief minister ever since she saw media reports. She however did not find it worthwhile to pay a customary visit to the hunger-affected regions, not far away from Mount Abu. Nor were any of the chief ministers present at the conclave interested in getting a first hand feel of hunger and starvation. And that included chief ministers of Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Karnataka and Maharashtra, the States, which have been faced with hunger and malnutrition deaths in the recent past. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who has never visited a village during his entire tenure, obviously had no time for the dying tribals in Rajasthan. None of his colleagues, and that includes the Food Minister, Mr Sharad Yadav, who claims to be a champion of backward tribes, found it worthwhile even to include Baran district in his official travel itinerary. On the other hand, the health minister, Mr Shatrughan Sinha, who should be worried at the growing malnutrition, was busy dancing and singing to celebrate his birthday. Politicians of all political parties, without exception, have been busy talking about disinvestment and ministry expansion. Policy makers spend more time with industrialists and business houses, or hobnobbing with the diplomats in the cocktail circuits. Media too has been very busy with the page three crowd. And if you are wondering about agricultural scientists, don’t forget they too have little time for the small and marginalised farming communities. They are busy promoting the commercial interests of the multinational seed and biotechnology companies. In a country, which alone has one-third of the world’s 800 million people who go to bed hungry every night, hunger and starvation no longer evokes compassion and reaction. News of hunger and starvation no longer adorns the front pages of newspapers. Hunger is, in reality, a non-issue. It is something that we must despise, something that we must close our eyes to. After all, the elite should not spoil their morning breakfast looking at pictures of the hungry splashed on the front pages of daily newspapers. Even the farmer leaders, who once led powerful agitations to see that the lowly farming class gets at least two square meals a day, have deserted the farming lot. They have now moved on to the plush confines of the biotechnology industry, feeling comfortable in their new role of public relations for the corporate interests. Reports of hunger and starvation, whether in Rajasthan or in Orissa, no longer shocks. They even remain unmoved by the increasing number of farmers taking the fatal route to escape the humiliation that comes along with growing indebtedness. Hunger is a price that the poor have to pay in the short-term for the irretrievable economic reforms. The newly emerging leadership in religious discourse, you see them religiously on the television every morning and evening, refuses to even acknowledge that growing hunger and starvation is a human folly. Nor do they blame the religious indifference towards the poor, hungry and downtrodden to be the cause for the shameful paradox of plenty that exists. Many of them, in fact, are busy in buying land and property and that too at a subsidised rate from the government’s quota. Not many of them see God in every destitute and hungry. Except of course for the compassion shown by a group comprising Baba Mohan Singh, a spiritual guru of Sikhs, who dispatched 50 sewadars to the starved Baran district to start a langar (community kitchen) to feed 1,00,000 people for the next three months. But the government continues to dither and drag its feet. Even the Supreme Court’s directive to the government last year to “devise a scheme where no person goes hungry when the granaries are full and lots being wasted due to non-availability of storage space,” hasn’t had the desired impact. Except for statistical jugglery, the government remains non-committal on its role in eradicating hunger. And that too at a time when the country is saddled with an unmanageable food stocks of 65 million tonnes, much of it already rotting and turning into cattle feed. Three months before the Supreme Court’s directive, Mr Vajpayee, had said in his inaugural address to a national consultation on “Towards a Hunger Free India” in New Delhi in April 2001: “Democracy and hunger cannot go together. A hungry stomach questions and censures the system’s failure to meet what is a basic biological need of every human being. There can be no place for hunger and poverty in a modern world in which science and technology have created conditions for abundance and equitable development.” And yet, all his government did was merely rename and ‘strengthen’ the public distribution system and to ‘use foodstocks in an imaginative and purposeful way’ to stabilise prices and boost exports. Interestingly, the President of India, Mr A P J Abdul Kalam, too had presided and released a food insecurity atlas of India (in reality, the hunger atlas of India) at a function organized by the World Food Programme and MS Swaminathan Research Foundation a few weeks back. He did talk about the dichotomy of hunger at a time when the food silos were bursting but refrained from initiating any move that embarrasses the ruling party. And despite his efforts to reach out to children in well-to-do- schools, Mr Kalam hasn’t found any time to meet ‘the children of a lesser god’. After all, it is not the right protocol for the Present of India to sit among the poor and hungry children, many of who have already lost their parents from hunger and starvation. In such a dismal scenario, the 320 million people who sleep with an empty stomach every night in India, will have to live on hope - hoping that one day a Bill Gates will come to India with a bagful of money to fight hunger. Prime Minister, leaders of Opposition parties and the chief ministers will then line up to receive the richest man in the world, sing praises for his passionate concern for the underprivileged and vow to join hands with him to remove hunger. Till then, the hungry unfortunately will have to wait. Is Bill Gates listening? Devinder Sharma

November 2002 Devinder Sharma is a New Delhi-based food and trade policy analyst. Among his recent works include two books GATT to WTO: Seeds of Despair and In the Famine Trap

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