Feast for Thought

"Maharashtra ended famine forever by passing an Act that deleted the word ‘famine' from all laws of the State." Food Security - by definition "....Who will you export it to? Are there good global prices for rotting grain? Grain that even when in best condition was not of superior quality? What you will do is flog it at rock bottom prices to traders who know you won't consider any other option — like letting the hungry eat it — and can knock your prices through the floor. And then the traders can export it as cattle feed — like India has done before in this very decade. About the only thing Iran and Iraq could agree on in 30 years was that the grain exported to them from India was unfit for human consumption. Both rejected shipments early this decade. But there are always, never fear, European cattle. Talk of sacred cows — these will be subsidised by some of the hungriest humans on the planet....." Why isn't P Sainath our Minister for Agriculture? If you ...

Why is that - invariably - concerned persons are never the persons concerned? If you follow Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman's columns on the US economy, you'd think - why isn't he in Barack Obama's team? Then the US President could have avoided such sittings with the ever-hungry media. (though it was refreshing to see a famous political figure admitting mistakes - see Obama on his selection of tax defaulters for his team ). Only then would the power - to do the right thing by the masses (not the classes) - would be in the right hands, and the 'person concerned' is actually a 'concerned person'. There are many such examples - Follow P Sainath's studies and articles and the painful statistics put together by him, and you'll wonder - why is he not the Minister for Agriculture? (conversely of course why is the Minister of Agriculture not the one doing all those studies and following up on them?) And another - Sunita Narain and India's Centre fo...

When one travels by road or rail in India, it is such a pleasure to watch green pastures flit by. Thankful for a chance to stop on the way back from Paataal Paani in MHOW, MP, we yielded to the standing invitation of verdant countryside to stop and quietly appreciate the hands that till and toil hard for our tables to remain supplied..... Indore district has plenty of seasonal potato cultivation. We could see expanses of the plants in various stages, while driving through to tourists spots in the district. Eyes sore from cities' concrete jungles, one cannot have enough of watching welcoming green acres, and we stopped to talk to a proud farmer, Mr B, who willingily shared details of his 'bread and butter'. We came away from the fields as contented as that smiling, optimistic land care-taker. As a keen follower of P Sainath's articles and reports on the unhappy farming households of (mostly central) India, and the figures that always bring tears to the eyes, Gandhiji...

Magsaysay award winner P Sainath writes that "The New York Times notes ruefully in a lead editorial: “Just weeks after the Treasury Department gave nine of the nation’s top banks $125 billion in taxpayer dollars to save them from unprecedented calamity, bank executives are salting money away in billionaire bonus pools to reward themselves for their performance.” Other bailout bandits have held meetings at resorts costing hundreds of thousands of dollars." Read The Jurassic Auto and Idea Park Auto giants, related sectors, and other oversized Inc. have, over decades, "destroyed both existing and potential public transport. The ‘American Dream’ so far as the automobile went was an imposed nightmare. In Detroit itself, you can see the skeletons of a once alive transport system. All across the country, for decades from the 1920s, they bought up public transport systems and shut them down. Trains were shifted from electric to diesel engines. Sometimes, they were simply done a...