Watching images of rotting food grains carelessly piled outside government godowns on prime-time television make your stomach turn. In a country with the most number of hungry people in the world, those responsible

 for such criminal waste should be caught and put behind bars for the rest of their lives. And the shocking fact is also that this is not a one-off incident – it is a matter reported year after year. India is ranked a poor 65th in the Global Hunger Index. Close to 300 million Indians go without food every day. Yet, those tonnes and tonnes of food grains are being allowed to sit and rot in the open. It has taken the Supreme Court to point out the obvious. Slamming the government over the issue, the apex court has stated: If you cannot store them (food grains), give it to the people to eat. This came about the time Food and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar was immodestly admitting in the Lok Sabha that over 11,700 tonnes of food grains worth Rs 6.86 crore was found ‘damaged’ in government storage facilities. For politicians, this is all apparently routine statistical data that is released from time to time. Reports say that almost 17.8 million tonnes of wheat and rice are stored under tarpaulins across India. Out of this about 10 million tonnes are at risk of rotting, which could end up costing the country around Rs 17,000 crore. In Punjab, 49,000 tonnes of the foodgrain is ready to be destroyed after being wasted through three monsoons. The amount of food grain wasted was 9.4 million tonnes in 2008, 16 million tonnes in 2009 and 17.8 million tonnes in 2010. In Madhya Pradesh where over a hundred children are reported to have died of malnutrition in the past one year, nearly three lakh metric tonnes of food grains have been found rotting out in the rain in the various districts. This, even as the BPL families in the state are getting  just 20 to 25 kg of food grain a month which is less than the 35 kg stipulated by the Supreme Court. This is the sorry tale replayed in almost all the states across a country three out of five children go to sleep without food. One can only wonder with what kind of conscience those allowing such criminal waste are going to sleep at night.

QUOTE

The waste of plenty is the resource of scarcity
- Thomas Love Peacock

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