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Hungry India set to export food
grains
Priyaleen K Renuka
NEW DELHI: Welcome
to hungry India flush with food grain. At a time when Indian
official figures say 48 per cent of all children in the country are
malnourished,
India
is watching its grain-mountains being eaten by the rats. In the just
held elections in the country, notwithstanding the largely agrarian
economy, the fact that teeming Indian millions remain hungry even as
massive food stocks rot and New Delhi pays scarce attention to
creating storage space for grains failed to become an issue even in
serious media quarters.
New Delhi is rarely
shamed, In 2002, forgetting its own hungry men, women and vast
majority of children, India got rid of overflowing mountains of
grains by allowing heavily subsidized exports. Now, it seems the
two-year-old ban on wheat exports is again to be lifted.
India's choices are
against the hungry. It can either export or store the grain in the
open and watch rats eat it or rains spoil it.
But why will India
export at a time when global prices are plunging? Worldwide, stocks
are at a high. Why cannot the public distribution system (PDS) be
used to distribute the grain to the poor? And why has the country,
even four decades after the green revolution, not created additional
storage space? What stops the government to hire private storage
space?
27
May 2009
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