Starving rich

Around half of the children in India are malnourished despite the country's record harvests in recent years. The state is the biggest buyer of harvested food, yet it does not reach the people who need it. Instead, millions of tons are left outside to rot.

For example in a warehouse (or godown, as it is referred to in India) on the outskirts of the capital city New Delhi. Full sacks of grain are piled right up to the roof with no further protection from rats and other vermin than the day laborers who shoo them away.

Outside the warehouse, there are mountains of grain sacks neatly stacked as far as they eye can see.

"Outside so many people are starving and in here, the food is just rotting away," says Savitri, a day laborer who works at the warehouse. "It is the government's fault that there is not enough adequate storage for the grain. We do what we can to protect the sacks but when it starts raining, there is simply nothing we can do about the sacks lying around outside."

Rotting grain

Some of the sacks have been lying outside, exposed to the sun and rain for the past four years, as Balraj, a local grain merchant, says.

"India is not a poor country. We are fully capable of feeding our population. But the politicians are corrupt and do nothing. The grain rots away and the people starve. Why doesn't India export its surplus grain? At least that would bring money into the country."

But selling it at world market prices wouldn't be profitable. The government provides subsidies; it sets fixed prices and buys up most of the grain, with the result that there's over 82 million tons of grain filling - and overflowing - state godowns at present. Only China stores more grain. But what is the use of such vast reserves if millions of Indians who go hungry? The country only has storage space for 60 million tons of grain.

Local, not central

"Rotting grain is tantamount to criminal negligence of the poor!" says Devinder Sharma, an expert on nutrition. The government pumps more than 13 billion US dollars every year in centrally-organized relief programs to supply the poor with basic food items such as flour and rice.

Unfortunately, more than half that amount is soaked up by the inflated and corrupt machinery of public distribution. Sharma demands the system be changed. He believes the best way to go would be further away from government subsidies and overproduction and toward local self-reliance.

"Our aim should be to save each and every bit of grain," he says. "Mahatma Gandhi himself said that a country like India does not need agricultural production on an industrial scale; it needs agriculture from which the rural population can feed itself."

Author: Sandra Petersmann / ac
Editor: Sarah Berning