We love Oscars not Slums : India

Many criticized the makers of Slumdog millionaire. They complained that India was projected in a bad taste. Poverty was shown but not the prosperity.

Recently there was a case before the Supreme Court of India. In an astounding position before the SC, it has held that one has to earn only Rs 455 a month in urban areas and Rs 328 in rural areas to escape the poor tag. “At present, on 1999-2000 prices, the poverty line at all India level is Rs 327.56 and Rs 454.11 for rural and urban people per capita per month respectively,” said the health and family welfare ministry in a recent affidavit.

In the government’s scheme, the poverty line drawn on the basis of monthly income varies widely from state to state. To classify as poor in the four metros — Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai — the person’s monthly income has to be less than Rs 506, Rs 540, Rs 410 and 475, respectively. Which means, if your daily earnings cross Rs 17 in Delhi, Rs 18 in Mumbai, Rs 14 in Kolkatta and Rs 16 in Chennai, you are among those fortunate not to be counted by the government as poor!!!!!!!! Despite using these ridiculously low monthly incomes to classify a person as poor, the government has identified a huge chunk — over 260 Million — as poor because they do not even earn these paltry sums. Now imagine this number.

As someone said we love Oscars not Slums. These figures were an eye opener for me. Certainly India is not shining for all those. We make a lot of noise when sensex drops by few points but nobody cries for the millions dying every day because they cant afford to buy food every day, because they cant buy medicines, because we don’t care for them.

I want the Indian Government to help these downtrodden rather than spending billions on war machines and all those glossy Advertisements to make India shining for elite few. These unfortunate people are also human beings. Help them. They also have right to live a dignified life.

(Trivia: Orissa and Bihar account for more than one-fifth of the total poor in India. As per affidavit, Jammu and Kashmir is least afflicted by poverty.)

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Starvation, inflation , power crises and us

Reading Indian newspapers last few days was like reading the script of new bond movie with news about bombs exploding everywhere and our policemen unearthing bombs one after another. The terrorists issuing more threats to famous personalities. It had all the masala of a classic hit film.
But another article caught my attention and made me think a lot. This was about the food crises in Haiti a Caribbean nation where the entire families are pushed towards hunger. (http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/30/stories/2008073055201100.htm).

Starvation, inflation , power crises and us

(src : The Hindu)
Their staple diet was mud! I can’t express my feelings when I read about how the families baked the mud and gave it to their children. And even it is not free some less fortunate people have to buy even these cakes!!!

We complain about the food in our cafeteria, about AC not working, about the yearly appraisal. Our list is very big. What about these poor souls, any body complaining?

In the last one year the global food prices have shot up. We are facing a crisis which the world has seen in the late 1950’s. But then the green revolution in many countries saved millions. But the situation now is entirely different. We don’t have enough land to cultivate to feed the millions.

Would you help them if given a chance? But how?
I will give a simple mantra – turn green, eat less. Consume less energy, save the energy, eat vegetarian food. Why veg? To produce I kg of meat on an average 8 kg of cereals is used. See the equation. We can pay for 1 kg of meat but it will surely affect the supply of 8 kg of cereals somewhere in the world. How this will help? This is pure economics. The demand –supply fight. (Pardon me those who can’t grasp this idea, I will explain more about this in next article). The less you demand the pressure on the supply will decrease & this might bring down the prices for those poor souls.

By doing this you might not be able to give a meal to the mothers of Haiti tomorrow but surely to few others in our own country. Many of you wont know that there are many communities in India (an even in the place where I live in the most educated state of India Kerala) many people live on mud cakes!!!

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World Food Day

World Food Day is celebrated every year on 16 October to commemorate the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

Some 854 million people, or about one in seven, lack sufficient food, according to FAO out of which more than 400 million are children

When we eat we never think about these millions. For us they are just numbers few statistics.

Forget about Africa, in our own country we will find millions still struggling to get food. We wont find images of these poor people in our newspapers or any other media. Hunger is the biggest killer much bigger than AIDS or cancer.

Our stock markets are @ all time high of 190000, GDP growth @ 9% the second largest in the world but still we have poorest people on the planet.

“We can make a difference. There is more than enough food in the world. For example in Italy, once the population’s nutritional requirements are met, there would be sufficient food left over for all the under-nourished people in Ethiopia; in France the “extra” could feed the hungry of the Democratic Republic of Congo, while in the United States it could cover all the hungry in Africa. Even in India we have surplus food. so next time when we waste food think about these poor souls.

Links you can use

http://www.fromhungertohope.com/default.asp
http://www.fao.org/wfd2007/index_en.html
http://www.un.org/Depts/dhl/food/index.html

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