"Bharat - Ek Sone Ki Chidiyan"

The News:
-  10,000 tonnes of paddy rots in Punjab

The Woes:
-  India has 50% of world's hungry people,
-  52% of India's children go to bed without food daily,
-  7% of India's children are malnourished,
-  India ranks 66th off 88 countries in battling hunger

With all this and more, we still allow 20K tonnes of food stock rot each year. This is just the official figure. The unofficial figure is somewhere around one lakh tonnes of food stock. Reasons being ...

• Lack of covered godowns to store the stock,
• Lack of good supply system,
• No accountibilty and then the blame-game between central and state government,
• India's full-time agriculture minister, who is responsible to feed 1.2 billion people, is also food minister, consumer affairs minister, heads and looks into his party affairs and is also a full-time ICC president.

India's problems till late 80s were not the same as today. There used to be a deficit in food stock. In fact, Late Former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri had urged the nation to fast on Mondays. Even the so-called Indian middle-class was poor. But last couple of decades... India has become self-sufficient in food. On the other hand, there has been this criminal wastage of food stock. It neither reaches the hungry nor does it reach the markets, which would ensure price stability and lower inflation. These decades has seen the Indian middle-class prosper and many earning much beyond bounds.

Here is something to ponder ...

"Bachpan mein suna tha ki bharat ek nirdhan logon ka dhanvaan desh hain,

Bharat ko tab 'Sone Ki Chidiyan' bhi kaha jaata tha,

Ab Bharat ek dhanvaan logon ka nirdhan desh ho gaya hain!"

- Vinod Dua in Vinod Dua Live on NDTV India