India’s ‘food security bill’ under fire

HOW ABSURD CAN IT BE ?

Marie Antoinette, born on 2 November 1755, assumed the title of Queen of France and of Navarre. Some academics and scholars have attributed the start of the French Revolution to her.

“Let them eat cake” is the traditional translation to English of the French phrase “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”, supposedly spoken by this “great princess” upon learning that the peasants had no bread. However, there is no evidence to support that she ever uttered this phrase, and it is now generally regarded as a “journalistic cliché”.

Sometimes, when faced with a certain situations, proverbs and famous quotations just conjure up in one’s mind.
I was amazed when I read newspaper articles on poverty and the solutions that the Indian Government came up with. In this case the “food security bill”.

The plan to give away food grains to the poor in the villages at an abnormally low cost is likely to result in two kinds of behaviour on part of the poor farmers.

One, “why should I work on my agriculture field when I am getting the food at a much lower cost than I can grow it by toiling for days on end”.  And the other could be, “why should my children learn to do anything in life since “food”, the only basic issue in life, has already been resolved”.

Perhaps a psychoanalyst would agree with this theory.  To my mind, if my basic need of food is met, then I am likely to sit back and enjoy life lazing under a tree. My instinct of survival and verve to move on in life is likely to get weaker, since I would no more be worried about my hungry children.

The best way to culturally pauperise a population is to dole out free or almost free, basics of life that a human needs…especially when one is not equipped to do anything else than farming and growing grains.

Is the government being helpful by doling out cheap food grains to the poor farming families? What are the likely repercussions of this mindless policy? Well, not very difficult to imagine.

If this policy is implemented, after a few years, when the Indian farmer stops growing the grain that he is getting almost free from the government, India will have to import it from other countries in hard currency.
And for the little cash the farming families will need to buy this cheap doled out grain, more and more children of these farming families would head towards the already bursting cities.

Uneducated and ill equipped youngsters are most likely to send the graph of crime go shooting through the roof throwing the law enforcing agencies in a spin.
One does not need data from the Planning Commission or the agriculture ministry to figure out the solution. One only has to go to the wise “proverbs” floating around the planet in every conceivable culture and scripture.

One Chinese proverb of Confucius goes like this, “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime”. The answer to poverty and hunger is that simple…

What India urgently needs to do today is to hunt down the old wise men across the country and relearn what got lost through hundreds of years of subjugation.
And then shun the bird brained contemporary politician who knows nothing other than the mantra of money and how to win votes in the next election.

There are these other wise men sitting around as members of our Planning Commission, costing the exchequer a packet in perks and salaries. I found it hilarious that one of the wise men suddenly makes a public statement about the food security bill, “It is a bad bill, frankly, from the point of view of implementation”.

It is hilarious because he sounds so helpless. And he continues to sit on the high table of Planning Commission without any qualms…perhaps perks are more important than the pride/backbone.