http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8682558.stm
"...Food protests
The World Bank estimates that one third of all the very poorest people
in the world live in India, and stories like those from Ganne have now
inspired a national Right To Food campaign.
Map
There have been protest rallies in the heart of Delhi, as the Indian
parliament prepares to debate a new Food Security Bill. It will
dictate how many people in the country get access to massively
subsidised food grain.
There's no doubt that India should be able to afford to feed its
people. But the devil is in the detail.
"It'll only cost the government about 1.2% of GDP to universalize a
system of giving food for all, cheap food for all," says Kavitha
Srivastava, the national coordinator of the Right to Food campaign.
"They can do it, if they have the political will. It's prioritising -
where do you want to put the money?"
"We think it should go in building people's nutrition levels. You
can't have a country which is weak, which is hungry, which is anaemic.
How can you have a nation like this?"
Now the government seems to be prepared to accept a new way of
defining poverty, which will increase the number of people below the
poverty line by more than 100 million to about 372 million.
If you simply throw money at this problem...you'll have to throw four
times the amount to get the result you want. And the government of
India can't afford that.
Dr Kaushik Basu
Finance ministry economic advisor
If international poverty standards were used, the number would be much
higher still - and some Indian economists believe it should be.
But whichever figure is used, the poverty line feels like a rather
fictitious divide because feeding more than a billion people is a
massive logistical exercise. Vast quantities of food provided by the
state go missing every day because of corruption and theft.
"Food ought to be a right," says Dr Kaushik Basu, the Chief Economic
Advisor at India's Ministry of Finance. "And I believe this is a
movement in the correct direction."
"But what worries me at times is that we're being too glib and quick
about the delivery mechanism."
Official estimates are that right across the country 75% of subsidised
grain does not make it to the intended target in villages like Ganne.
"So if you simply throw money at this problem, you'll have to throw
four times the amount to get the result you want," says Dr Basu. "And
the government of India can't afford that. The budget will go bust."
In other words, the delivery system needs to be reformed as well - and
corrupt local officials need to be taken to task. There is a long way
to go.
Daunting challenge
Jean Dreze, a highly respected Belgian-born academic who has worked in
India for many years, points out that the current debate is only about
the most basic levels of food intake.
A woman at a Fair Price shop
There are fair price shops where people can buy subsidised foodgrain
"For a family of five to have reasonably good nutrition, nothing like
meat or fish or any such thing, but just one egg per person per day,
one banana, some dhal, some vegetables, a reasonably balanced diet -
it would cost more than 200 rupees ($4.4; £3) per family per day," he
says.
And that is far more than the amounts being discussed at the moment.
It is a sobering reminder that feeding India is a daunting challenge -
the government knows it, and the prime minister says it must be a
priority. But the Right to Food Campaign insists they are not doing
enough.
The Indian economy continues to grow at impressive speed, and there is
no shortage of food in the country. It just isn't reaching the people
who need it most, on a consistent basis.
So in Ganne they continue to eat mud. And without finding a solution
here in India, the world will come nowhere near the targets it has set
itself for reducing global poverty.
--
You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot
build up a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you
will build on the foundations of caste will crack and will never be a
whole.
-AMBEDKAR
http://venukm.blogspot.com
http://www.shelfari.com/kmvenuannur
http://kmvenuannur.livejournal.com
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Green Youth Movement" group.
To post to this group, send an email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB.
