India is now a country where stock market has crossed 19000 points, where inflation is under control, where we are achieving the economic stability…but still another part of this reality is one in every two children under three years of age is hungry.
One fine day, there happens to be media coverage of some village showing the poverty, hunger, and malnutritioned children. Then next morning, in newspaper we see one politician posing with these people, with we as readers thinking whether this is a genuine concern or another PR skill.
So to eradicate these basic grass root troubles, still no apt solution has been achieved. Though out of few plans being adopted to find a solution, ‘anganwadi’was one! The main aim was to provide children with at least one good meal. But along with this good social effort, another thing that cannot be escaped unseen is the fact that there is no assurance that after this one healthy meal, they would get another meal for the day or not. In country like India, it is very much possible for those children to sleep empty stomach after that one meal of the day.
Many villages are coming up with the trend of self-help groups to empower women. But again there happens to be no fruitful consequence of saving this money. Their husbands will grasp the money, get drunk and make life more miserable.
Small hands working in factories day and night to get earn another meal of the day. So what is the end to all this. Its really easy to say that population will soon be under control. But it is equally difficult to convince the people for the same since; children are the biggest assets to them. They prefer to produce more children rather than dying of hunger.
And why not? They are also quite justified with the living conditions they are in!
No matter how high the sensex is reaching. It seems that misrability rate in Indian villages is still higher.
The United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organization put it simply in 2006 that its State of Food Insecurity in the World report confirmed yet again that we have the largest number of undernourished people in the globe. The 2004 edition of the report has shown that India had added more people to the ‘newly hungry’ in the planet than the rest of the world together. There, too, nations much worse off had done far better. Between the years 1995-97 and 2000-02, hunger grew in India at a time when it fell in Ethiopia.
So looking at these ground realities and not just ‘overlooking’ them and celebrating our success stories at international level, I think it’s a high time of excusing ourselves.
Out of 365 days, just imagine how many times, do we eat at McDonalds, Pizza Huts, and Café Coffee Days. But its really thought provoking if we imagine to step in the shoes of those people who spend equal number of days finding food in the scraps we throw in the bin.
Therefore it’s still a long way to go. ‘Healthy meal’ is still a dream to be achieved for many Indians who are working day and night to fill our stomachs. So the fact that should not be forgotten is that even farmers and their families are human beings, they too feel hungry and even they deserve their basic minimum needs to be fulfilled.
Rather than spending all the energy and attention on all other issues of the world, our ‘real heroes (farmers)’ too demand little bit of attention and definitely deserve good health of their share!