Punjab Agro
Food grains Corporation (PAFC) and Markfed floated tenders for auctioning 1.93
lakh tonnes of food grain (whose market value - if it was fit for consumption -
is around 294 crore) which is not fit for human consumption. These food grains
are procured between 2010-11 to 2012-13 years.
These food
grains are rotten due to its unscientific storage and delay in distribution.
Just imagine how much food is wasted in a country where millions of hungry
stomachs go to bed every day. Do these people, who are responsible - for
procurement, storage, distribution (and of course works for government) - ever
heard about starvations deaths in various parts of our country? In 2013 alone a
single tribal village in Attapady (Palakkad, Kerala) lost 51 kids due to
malnourishment. Did they ever heard about kids born (and many died) because their mothers - when they were
pregnant - were not fed enough? Did they ever know that many parts of our
country is getting compared with Sub-Saharan Africa?
In MP alone
[kids under 5 years] 40% of children were stunted and 60% were underweight; In
Rajasthan the numbers are 24% and 44% respectively [NFHS 3].
Problems in
storage are nothing new. We are facing this complication for a very long time.
Same thing goes with dumping food grains. This is also happening here for a
very long time. At one part of the country people are dying because of
starvation and we are dumping food grains in oceans.
Even
distributing freely, this much food would have helped thousands of people to
sleep without huger atleast for a day.
This situation
is not due to any financial problems faced by our central or state governments;
but it's happening due the fact that, we don't care much about what happens to
our agriculture produce. We don't care about people who are living in areas
where noisy television channels don't go. We don't care because these deaths
hardly matters to us - nothing more than a statistical entity in some reports.
When will this
change? Or will this ever change?
Sajeev
PS:
As per 'World
Food Program's' reports,
1. Some 795
million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active
life. That's about one in nine people on earth.
2. The vast
majority of the world's hungry people live in developing countries, where 12.9
percent of the population is undernourished.
3. Asia is the
continent with the most hungry people - two thirds of the total. The percentage
in southern Asia has fallen in recent years but in western Asia it has
increased slightly.
4. Sub-Saharan
Africa is the region with the highest prevalence (percentage of population) of
hunger. One person in four there is undernourished.
5. Poor
nutrition causes nearly half (45%) of deaths in children under five - 3.1
million children each year.
6. One out of
six children -- roughly 100 million -- in developing countries is underweight.
7. One in four
of the world's children are stunted. In developing countries the proportion can
rise to one in three.
8. If women
farmers had the same access to resources as men, the number of hungry in the
world could be reduced by up to 150 million.
References
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