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Rabba Rabba Meenh Wasa
WSN Network
 NEW
DELHI: It's a measure of how bad the drought currently affecting
India is: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told a meeting of chief
secretaries of states that the country is facing a "difficult
situation" and set a target that "in no case should we allow
citizens to go hungry".
The possibility
of more Indians going hungry is real enough, with 141 of the
country's 626 districts hit by drought.
There has been
an overall deficit of 25 per cent in rainfall this monsoon. With
about 60 per cent of the country's population dependent on
agriculture for a living, things look grim.
Food prices,
too, have been rising, and the prime minister has warned that
reduced food production in the kharif (summer and monsoon) season
crop is likely to have a "further inflationary impact on prices of
food items".
"The contingency
plan for crops, drinking water, human and animal health, fodder, etc
should be brought into operation without delay and a close watch
kept on availability of foodgrains and prices of essential
commodities," Singh told the meeting.
The opposition
Bharatiya Janata Party announced on Saturday that it would launch a
nation-wide agitation against price rise on August 17, the day the
prime minister meets state chief ministers to discuss the issue.
 Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh has asked state governments to complete the
paperwork to seek central assistance, start relief operations to
help farmers overcome the current drought in the country, and come
down heavily on hoarders who try to profit from the reduced
foodgrain production.
"I am told that
no state has so far sent its memorandum seeking assistance," the
Prime Minister told a conference of chief secretaries convened here
to discuss the response of states.
There has been
an overall deficit of 25 per cent rain this monsoon.
Bihar,
Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand,
Punjab, Haryana,
Jharkhand, Assam and Himachal Pradesh are among the worst affected
states. Singh also spoke of the Centre and the States working
together to contain the increase in prices of essential
commodities.
"We will also
have to ensure effective enforcement of stock holding limits and
strong action against hoarders and black marketeers," he told the
states. He also emphasised on the need to activate the public
distribution system, an important safety net to cushion the poor
against price rise.
Agriculture
Minister Sharad Pawar, who also spoke at the meet, was blunt in
telling the states that only state governments were empowered to act
against hoarders and blackmarketeers.
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MP worse than Ethiopia in
hunger index
New Delhi: One
of the biggest Indian states, Madhya Pradesh, is increasingly
turning out to be the Asian poverty bowl and has left behind
even Ethiopia in terms of hunger, a report by an authority no
less than the Planning Commission of India has deduced.
The hunger
index for Madhya Pradesh is now extremely alarming at 30.9 while
Chattisgarh and Jharkhand, widely considered as poor states,
have a hunger index of 26.6 and 28.7, respectively.
The BJP ruled
Madhya Pradesh has failed for a long time in hunger management
efforts and available figures suggest that its hunger problem
worsened between 1994 and 2008, the years of the two hunger
indexes.
The spiralling
hunger situation has taken its toll on the nutrition level of
the state. The number of under-weight children, less than three
years old, has increased from 53.5 per cent in National Family
Health Survey (2) to 60.3 per cent in NFHS-3. Similarly, the
number of anaemic children has increased from 71.3 per cent to
82.6 per cent between the two surveys.
The reason for
poor human development indicators is probably the low per capita
income of the citizens. The per capita income of the state has
increased slightly from Rs 12,384 in 1999-2000 to Rs 14,346 in
2007-08 whereas the national average has almost doubled from Rs
16,258 to Rs 33,000. |
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12
August 2009
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