Only in India, the poor go hungry while grains rot

I always assumed that being cynical was a function of advancing years but I find now — in my advancing years, since you asked — that is it a defence mechanism for the young. Perhaps when you have seen too much, you become blasé but then that is a defence mechanism of the old.

So whatever the definition, the fact is that I have not been able to summon up the requisite amount of sophistication, maturity, ennui and awareness to accept the picture of millions of tonnes of food grains rotting all over the country, open to the elements and being eaten by rats while millions of people still starve in India. Naïve? Perhaps. Foolish? Most certainly. Sanctimonious and self-righteous? I’ll even accept those happily. But I cannot bring myself to accept that we as a people have to accept this bizarre and inhumane government policy which has allowed this.

We all know that inflation is crippling every household in the country. But wait, let’s qualify that statement. Inflation affects you when you take money to the market and then find that there’s little you can afford. Starving on a daily basis presupposes no or little money. So inflation affects you indirectly. But the starving does not stop. These lovely and prestigious Commonwealth Games have cost our nation some Rs30,000 crore. Of course, some of that is
investment for the future — and New Delhi will have for now and perpetuity many delightful flyovers and stadia. Great. Doesn’t somehow make the picture of all those rotting grains go away.

None of the explanations offered seem to make any sense either, especially in this non-cynical and self-righteous mode. The Food
Corporation of India does not have enough storage for the grains which it acquires. It acquires the grains because maybe there is a bumper harvest and farmers dump the grain or maybe they dump it because the tax imposed on them is too high. The upshot is a lot of grain. The grain cannot go to the open market easily
because there are some bureaucratic laws and procedures involved and it cannot go to the public distribution system because there are some bureaucratic laws and procedures involved. In between, there are some middlemen and traders who have their own compulsions to keep the grain where it is.

Meanwhile, we have a trillion schemes for poverty alleviation and sub-employment so that when we next make a count of how many poor people exactly there are in this great country of ours, we can scrap and argue over 300 million, 270 million, 500 million and whether we should count quality of living or the earning capacity of one in four and whether Rs20 a day can even be counted (in this market, it would buy you diddley-squat). The grains are still rotting in the meantime, as they have for years before and as they will for years after.

The Supreme Court, I was happy to see, is as puzzled as I am. Why not distribute the grains to the poor, it asked, perhaps not understanding that our extremely well-trained, savvy, intelligent, suave and sophisticated officials do not understand the question.

So really, when I thought about this Independence Day just gone, I found I did not care about what the prime minister said, about Kashmir, about Pakistan, about Maoists or anything at all except the picture of all that rotting grain.

Ah, well, rats I suppose have to eat too.

And that is something which India really makes you come to terms with.