Time to act

 

 

This refers to Arindam Chaudhuri’s thought provoking editorial (TSI, August 2-8), “Food wasted in FCI godowns…” It is really shocking that antiquated food storage methods and technologies have been costing India dearly as food worth Rs 50,000 crore is wasted every year. This comes roughly to 20 per cent of the total food produced by the country. Our politicians are to be blamed for this. The incorrigibility of our authorities is so predominant that despite having knowledge about these damages, they still have not taken any adequate measures to improve the storage facilities. The obvious way of dealing with this crisis of plenty is to simply transfer these grains to the poorest households in the 150 districts that the National Advisory Council (NAC) is proposing to initiate the first phase of a universal PDS under the proposed food security Bill. This would be an opportunity not only to mitigate hunger in the poorest regions of the country and have a direct impact on food inflation, but also allow the storage and a distribution bottleneck to be addressed before the Bill is enacted. While concluding, Arindam has rightly stated that when 20 to 30 crore Indians are sleeping hungry every night and over 7,000 are dying of hunger every day, such waste is not less than a criminal offence. In such a situation when the grain prices are at their peak, focus should be made to expand, upgrade and modernise the FCI facilities, which can then pave the way for a successful and sustainable National Food Security Bill. The government’s focus on the Right to Food Bill is outright populist! Not to forget, it has still a lot to do with respect to the distribution front as well. No wonder, we are worse than even sub-Saharan countries in the Global Hunger Index.

Neerja

Chandigarh