Hunger in India - BlogActionDay2011

We are happy to announce partnership with Blog Action Day 2011 . It is one of the poignant initiatives in the blogosphere. Read on to know more and to make a difference with your blog.

About Blog Action Day

Bloggers across the world represent a formidable force of fresh ideas, distinct perspectives and candid opinions. The diversity that bloggers bring in is immense and a collaborative effort can be extremely insightful and offers infinite possibilities.

Blog Action Day (BAD) encourages the bloggers across the world to ideate on a common topic on the same day. This year, Blog Action Day 2011 (#BAD2011) will be held on October 16, 2011 and the theme is FOOD. The date coincides with World Food Day.

On The eve of this Blog action day we retrospect and bring to you an article published in "THE GUARDIAN" , which also happens to be one of the media partners for Blog acion day.

 

 

The poker is glowing red hot in the flames of the burning wood. Suklal Hembrom holds a leaf against his stomach and warily eyes the older man sitting on the other side of the fire. Suddenly Thakur Das takes hold of the poker and lunges towards the boy's stomach.

 

Everyone in the village knows what should happen next. The child will scream loudly as the flesh begins to blister. Held down, he will writhe in agony. Again and again, the poker will jab at his belly. The more the child screams, the happier everyone will be, because the villagers of Mirgitand in India's Jharkhand state believe the only way they can "cure" the distended stomachs of their famished children is by branding them with pokers.

 

Das sees nothing wrong with the procedure. Nor does anyone in the village – most have scars of their own. Even though some children have died, the villagers continue because the alternative – providing enough nutritious food to sustain their children or paying for medical treatment – is simply not an option. In common with millions of others in the world's 11th largest economy, they face a daily battle to put even the most basic meal on the table.

 

A report out today warns that even in a fast-growing economy like India, failure to invest in agriculture and support small farms has left nearly half the country's children malnourished, with one fifth of the one billion plus population going hungry.

 

ActionAid, which published the report ahead of next week's summit in New York to discuss progress on the millennium development goals, says hunger is costing the world's poorest nations £290bn a year – more than 10 times the estimated amount needed to meet the goal of halving global hunger by 2015.

 

India now has worse rates of malnutrition than sub-Saharan Africa: 43.5% of children under five are underweight and India ranks below Sudan and Zimbabwe in the Global Hunger Index. Even without last year's disastrous monsoon and the ensuing drought and crop failures, hunger was on the increase.

 

The government has promised a new food security bill to provide cheap food for the poor, but progress has been slow. The reality is that a country desperate to take its place at the world's top table is unwilling to commit to feeding its own population.

 

Last month the country's supreme court castigated the government for allowing 67,000 tonnes of badly stored grain to rot – enough to feed 190,000 people for a month – and ordered it to distribute 17.8m tonnes in imminent danger of rotting.

 

India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, protested, saying the court had crossed the line into policy-making and warning that distributing free food to the estimated 37% of the population living below the poverty line destroyed any incentives for farmers to produce. The court stood firm. It was an order, not a suggestion, the judges said.

 

According to ActionAid, global hunger in 2009 was at the same level as in 1990. The charity urged developed countries to make good on £14bn pledge to fight hunger, announced at last year's G8 summit in Italy.

 

"On the eve of the most important development summit for five years, a billion people will be going to bed hungry," said Meredith Alexander, the charity's policy head. "Despite promises to the contrary, one-sixth of humanity doesn't get enough to eat. But we grow enough food to feed every man, woman and child on the planet. The real cause of hunger isn't lack of food, it is lack of political will."

 

The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation announced today that the number of hungry people worldwide has dropped by 98 million to 925 million in the past year. However, Oxfam warned the decline is largely down to luck, such as two years of favourable weather patterns, rather than action from world leaders.

 

You Can read the rest of the article here.