India's National Food IN-Security

The country’s GDP is reeling under the pressure of Eurozone and global economic turbulence, the Indian currency is rapidly loosing its sheen, the markets throbbing with negative anticipation and each of the centre’s political allies relentlessly pushing for their pound of flesh! Did Pranab Babu, the Brahmin from Kirnahar and the perpetual second-in-command in successive Congress governments, have a choice but to declare austerity measures and a slow withdrawal of fuel subsidies? Apparently none. But why then the Government, didn’t press the button a little earlier by controlling the expenses on the lame duck President’s insipid foreign visits? Why then the state is contemplating building a 4,500 square feet sprawling bunglow, in Pune Cantonment area, for the President’s post retirement stay, wasting a few more precious crores? This at a time when the State has failed miserably in its duty to ensure food and nutrition for poorest of the poor of this country.

The article 47 of the Indian constitution says, “The State shall regard the raising of the level of nutrition and the standard of living of its people and the improvement of public health as among its primary duties”. Even the Supreme Court has linked citizens’ right to food to their fundamental rights, hearing PILs and delivering judgements and observations in atleast 65 cases, since 2011, related to hunger, malnutrition, food and social insecurity, etc. But does anyone believe that the Government has paid any heed to the Apex court’s call for accountability and action?

Innumerable Indians die of starvation and malnutrition. The numbers are appalling and scary. The Great Indian Food Paradox is that every year millions of tonnes of food grains are left to rot and are scandalously wasted, in absence of adequate and proper storage space and competent supply chain strategies. Ceaselessly kept on its toe by its political allies the Government continues to be burdened with the weight of the great Indian populist politics, and is obliged to be the largest single buyer of the gross national agricultural produce, in the name of a systemically flawed concept called ‘national food security’ – a misnomer in a country where well over 30% of the population are reeling under intense poverty and are struggling to secure one measly square meal a day.

The Government hardly has an alternative when it comes to buying the agricultural produce to try and protect the farmers from resorting to distress sale of food grains in case of bumper crops. Smarting under the compulsions of coalition politics, the UPA Government keeps on pleasing agricultural lobbies by ensuring basic minimum price of purchase, completely regardless of the demand-supply theory as well as the health of its very own coffer. Every lawmaker in the parliament sings to the same tune and never questions the populist yet chronically inefficient method of the Central food procurement policy.

The fact remains unchanged and is in the public domain, that incredible amounts of food grains are wasted year after year, due to the sheer incompetence of the successive Governments in providing adequate storage or establishing a properly functioning supply chain. Neither the Babus nor the Netas are willing to question the terribly flawed system, resulting in colossal wastage of accumulated stocks, left to rot under the vagaries of merciless weather conditions in open and unprotected spaces. The saddest dilemma is that if the Government sanctions funds for building up a chain of state-owned godowns, its treasury would fall short of the money required to purchase food grains from the farmers, to hoard up the godowns built on public money in the first place. What a damning irony at hand!

Another pertinent question is then why doesn’t the Government just use up the surplus crops and distribute them at subsidised rates through public distribution system? The answer is simple: transportation costs, system inefficiencies, leakages, pilferages, theft and manipulation by local officials and dealers would jack up the cost of distribution quite a few notches above the cost of storing them in open spaces.

So would it help bringing in supply chain specialists, who have the knowledge, experience, moolah and intention with no compulsion other than that of practicality, economy and commerce? Would our quintessential political class, raise themselves above serving their petty political interests, by grabbing onto an opportunity to show that they care? Or would FDI in Retail continue to be the favourite whipping boy for the legislators, especially the ones who are happy to keep a seriously starved nation hanging on its hinges, and sacrificing pure economic logic and larger good on the altar of dumb regional politics?!

 

Pic courtesy: various news sources     

Who needs constitutional puppets anyway?

The current Indian President’s foreign visits spanning over the last half-a-decade have driven an incredibly large hole, deep into the pockets of the national exchequer, funded by the struggling taxpayers.  Her ‘official’ wanderlust, along with her kin, has made the country poorer by a whopping 205 crore, breaking all records with aplomb. The president’s itchy feet achieved the nearly impossible feat, while millions of Indians are left smarting under intense poverty, crippling inflation, endless corruption and dumb Indian politics.

The President, while talking to leading Indian news channels recently, justified her foreign trips claiming that her visits ‘go a long way in boosting India’s image internationally’! She described her 20 plus foreign trips to be ‘very successful’ in promoting India's growing image abroad and strengthen the country's ties with those nations. Beat that!

 ... is this the great Nehruvian socialist dream we all dreamt of?

From as much as I have followed the ‘ghoongta’ flaunting, coy demeanored lady during her tenure, with little or no demonstrated ‘aura’-tory or oratory skills, I am at my wits end to understand how her visits would ‘enhance’ the image of a modern, rising, new India to the rest of the world! Titular constitutional heads like the President or the Governors, in their current avatars, hardly have any influence on the Indian socio-economic or foreign policies. Some of them even get chosen based on their political affiliation that betrays their personal merit or caliber for the post. After more than half century of trials and tribulations of independent India, do we still need to continue with these useless constitutional posts and continue to drain tax payer money, those could well be used to alleviate deeper socio-economic problems like national ‘food security’?

Obama-Singh Joint Press Conference and an impoverished democracy: National integration and the radical groups - Part II

The nation waited with bated breath in anticipation of a historic press conference to be addressed by the first officially visiting Constitutional Head of a country during the tenure of President Obama. To the disappointment of many, there wasn’t any apparent expression or demonstration on the part of either of the Statesmen to prove that was any major breakthrough or spectacular understanding, except for the fact that Dr. Singh put it in so many words, during the joint statement session, that he was ‘satisfied’ with the outcome of his discussions with the President of USA, and that Obama termed India a natural ally in the war against terrorism.

Whether Dr. Singh was able to remove the bottlenecks created by the Obama administration to the nuclear deal and hasten up the process was unclear. Neither was it apparent whether President Obama could pressurise India enough to bend to the demands of the developed nations related to the signing of the nuclear NPT or agreeing to the emission standards to prevent climate change. It seemed as if the entire media hype surrounding the summit came a cropper.

But, one statement made by President Obama got me thinking. He mentioned during his address that America has quite a few things to learn from India and took the example of India's story of being a food sufficient nation. Pride is the natural feeling that I should have experienced immediately. On the contrary I was engulfed by a strange feeling of helplessness and sorrow. Can you beat the gaping paradox, staring right at our face, that in a statistically food sufficient country like ours, nearly 400 million is languishing in severe poverty, barely surviving on a meal a day, earning much less than a dollar a day worth income?

We are spending billions on research and developing technologies to try and search for the ever-evasive, yet-to-be-detected ‘life’ on extra-terrestrial locations when we have not being able to protect or improve lives of our own very real people in our own very real, very independent country, right here, right now. I have nothing against lunar missions or nuclear energy. But I am certainly not ok with the pretentious stances taken by our statesmen and myopic politicians, while proclaiming the huge successes of the 5-Year Plans and path-breaking economic measures taken by successive governments, for complete eradication of poverty.

Even after more than 50 years of Independence India still has the world's largest number of poor people in a single country. It’s like the proverbial albatross, the noose around the neck that the world’s largest democracy is doomed to live with, forever. An extremely powerful ex-Prime Minister of this country had once famously admitted that post independence, we have faltered as a nation, in three primary areas – food, healthcare, education. Three decades later, the situation hasn’t changed much. Or has it? This is a no-brainer.

Our equity markets are buzzing with bullish sentiments and activities, more than ever before. FIIs never get tired listening to the India story and keep coming in hoards, even during phases when the rest of the world’s economies were facing crippling credit crisis scenarios.

The world’s pretty much convinced ... India is the next big thing! But are we, in reality? If yes, then at what cost? I would like to understand the true meaning of economic prowess? Is it the ability of few of the large industrial conglomerates to make mind-boggling multi-billion dollar global acquisitions or is it the nation’s ability to provide food, shelter, adequate healthcare, qualitative education, employment, social security and empowerment to all its subjects?

Ensuring national energy sufficiency is important, no doubt. But equally important, if not more so, is eradication of impoverishment plaguing hundreds of millions. Do we want to build our growth story on extremely weak socio-economic foundations?

Going by the projections recently provided by the United Nations, over a billion people are hungry, worldwide. And it’s incredible a fact that India accounts to nearly 40% of that figure. Doesn’t it sound like a farce, when our politicians proclaim India as the next economic superpower or Nobel-winning American President wishes to learn the tricks of being food grain sufficient and independent from the Indian economists and policy makers, while 400 million of our countrymen cannot generate enough income to meet their basic needs of food, shelter, healthcare and education?

Poverty rarely receives any lip service from the self proclaimed socio-political crusaders (aka political leaders and activists), nor do they get any footage in media platforms – ‘poverty’ is hardly a glamorous subject or spectacle for the ‘revolutionary’ Indian media in comparison to say a failed lunar mission, or the news related to the inability of the Indian bureaucrats to drive the nuclear deal through the Obama administration. As a nation we are obsessed with “Breaking News” ... and ‘poverty’ doesn’t qualify!

Pics courtesy: Mangalore Today