Rotting Food and a Rotten Minister

The thing I like about agriculture economics is that most of it is common sense and hence in critical short supply. Listen to the best brains around – Sainath, Devender Sharma, Suman Sahai, MS Swaminathan, even, occasionally, Swaminathan Aiyer – and you would wonder in bewilderment at the absence of common sense and simplicity in the entire Government system around agriculture.
Take the issue – now fading in public memory since it hit the headlines earlier this year – of rotting food. When a conscientious activist filed an RTI application in January 2010 asking for information on just how much food was rotting or damaged in the godowns of the Food Corporation of India, the answer stunned the nation: 10,688 lakh tonnes. Lets put this down numerically: 10,688,00,000,000 kgs.
When I contrast the insistence in most middle class families that the food on the table – mere grams of rice, or an extra roti - not be left over or thrown away, with this wanton, egregious, almost criminal waste, our value system seems terribly pointless. I spent some time reading articles on just why such large quantities of food lay rotting away. Let me give you some of the reasons :
1. Godowns available, but
a. leased out to the food companies such as Pepsi and ITC, who pay higher rents than FCI (I am referring to godowns owned or operated by State Governments, not by private players, so their touching refrain on a godown’s profitability is most unbelievable)
b. used to stock liquor, because of its ‘value-add’.
c. no labour to move material into it. Hence, food kept out in the open, under plastic sheets, while the godown lies semi-occupied. Dampness in the air in the monsoons encourages toxic fungal growth.
d. administrative apathy: no one sees the point in loading bags into a godown and out, when it will not rain (of course, it rains immediately).
2. Food in godown not taken out (in Haryana) before flooding, despite five days notice given on possible need for evacuation.
3. Bags of grain stocked one on top of another in colossal piles, which means that the grain at the bottom is damaged. In this technology age, no State Government has created grain silos, an obvious solution.
4. In instances, lack of availability of space in food godowns.
In other words, a large part of this wastage is hugely avoidable.
So much for supply. Lets talk of the need for grain. The National Sample Survey consumer expenditure data tells that 74.5 per cent of rural persons could not reach the recommended level of 2400 calories of daily intake in 1993 to 1994. By 2004-05, the percentage had reached an unprecedented high of 87 per cent. As importantly, the quality of food they eat is deteriorating as well.
A big part of India’s agricultural and food crisis, including this horrendous wastage, can be attributed to one man: our Honourable Agriculture-cum-Food-cum-Consumer Affairs Minister, of whom it can be safely said that, in the last seven years that he has held these portfolios, he has done virtually nothing to address India’s food security and long term agricultural balance. His decisions (including ones regarding the export of grain when there is a deficit) are bizarre; indeed never has he let reason or wisdom come in the way of a decision (or, indeed, in the absence of a decision). Add to this a rather outsized ego: when asked about the impact of food inflation on the poor, for instance, he said that if the poor could afford to buy soft drinks, then they could surely afford food essentials. His star moments are when he indulges in the politics of cricket with abandon,
Then, why does the Prime Minister put up with this?
The answer: the Hon Minister in question has considerable nuisance value and is an astute trouble maker, fishing with characteristic elan in troubled waters. The late US President Lyndon Johnson once said of a powerful, but troublesome colleague, “It is better to have him inside the tent pissing out, rather than outside the tent pissing in.”
It’s a heavy price to pay for India’s rotting food.

Temple temper

A few months ago, I visited a famous temple off the Bangalore - Mangalore road. It must have once been a simple and beautiful structure, built by those who believed in their work. Over the last couple of decades, though, structure after structure had been built to milk the anxious devotee, until the temple’s own beauty, its ethereal charm, its sense of tranquility had all been drowned by the human mass atop an enterprise. Now, the main thoroughfare in front of the temple has become shamelessly commercial, cheap Chinese toys are sold everywhere and the dirty heaps of plastic carry bags – used everyday in their thousands to carry offerings into the temple and then thrown away - are an environmentalist’s nightmare. It’s hard to focus on The Conversation with the Higher One, under such circumstances.

We – my wife, son and I – nevertheless got into the queue of those seeking that audience of a split second with Him - a priceless second to thank, complain, ask (actually, plead), negotiate, cajole, promise, promise to keep the promise, weep and, at times, berate. It was a long queue that got noisier as we approached the Sanctum, with many craning their necks or hoisting their little ones onto their shoulders, often inflicting, in the process, some collateral damage, as I believe the term is, on those behind.
I have never been a ‘religious’ person (indeed, I truly don’t understand the definition. What makes a person religious or irreverent ?), nor am I comfortable with crowds. I had a tight hold on my son, and spent my time looking at the others in the queue.

Above all of us was a large signboard which stated, rather rudely I thought, that photography, including mobile-phone photography, was banned in the premises. While I tried to think of just why this signboard was necessary, I wouldn’t think of breaking this rule. One accepts what one has to.
…and then someone had to do it. A fellow near me – a middle aged, respectable looking chap – cupped his mobile camera in his hand in anticipation and, in that split second when he had a clear view, he clicked the picture and pocketed his camera with a smug look of intent achieved.
It took about five seconds for a pujari to catch him and then, to use a most inappropriate term when referring to the location, all hell broke loose. Two other robust looking men accosted the photographer and tried to snatch the camera away, while he pretended that he had done no wrong, all the while holding on to his mobile phone for dear life. The argument turned louder and nastier, primarily due to the fellow’s incapacity to accept his mistake and his unwillingness, when confronted with evidence, to delete the picture. Others joined in, of course, as will always happen anywhere in India and there were opinions both ways.

The bedlam around this incident and the crowd jostling for space were just a bit too much for me to bear, for I have no recollection of my moment with The Higher One. I was out of the inner Sanctum in a trice, and took in fresh air with vigour, happy to get away from the argument, but feeling quite irritated at the whole thing. I wonder just how devotees experience true inner bliss amidst such chaos.

On the way out of the temple, I was thinking of this little incident and mulling on just how unneccessary and dissatisfying it was for all concerned. I will never understand why our friend, the renegade photographer, visited the temple. Did he want to Converse, or was he chasing a momento, a screen saver that he could consult everytime he cut ethical corners in his daily living ?
I will also never understand why the pujari – The Representative, one would imagine – made a scene, used force and abused this man. Surely, his time is better spent at a higher level of engagement.

At a broader level, of course, the reality is that the vast majority of ‘devotees’ visit temples as a part of a running contract with The Higher Power, where money is their quid pro quo for the many favours asked, including the assuaging of guilt. In these temples of commerce, priests are the management team (with high performance bonuses) and the products – laddus, flowers, pujas - are profit centres.

I would opt, any day, for the friendly village temple with a part-time priest, who works in the fields for a living and spends his mornings and evenings at the shrine. He may be a bit fuzzy with the specifics of Sanskrit and the nuances of ritual, but his heart is generally in the right place. May his tribe increase.

Akash Mallige

This is the season of the Akash Mallige. Next to the laburnum, about which I have written earlier in Spring, the Akash Mallige is my tree of choice. If you happen to go on a walk and smell a divine, mild scent, at times inhibited by the smoke from vehicular traffic, but otherwise ethereal, look down at the semi-carpet of white flowers and then at the gorgeous tree that reaches for the sky, its flowers bunched downwards, much like a fashionable set of ear-rings. The fragrance always makes me grateful to the social forestry men of Bangalore who, with much perspicacity, planted many of these trees all around the city – indeed five tall ones stand majestically on the pavement in front of my home.

The Akash Mallige flowers twice a year, the monsoon being its piece de resistance. The flowering begins modestly enough and soon the tree is in bloom. Everything about the flower is delicate, its white with a streak of pink, the fragrance of course, the long stem and the almost entreating countenance it wears as you pick it up from the ground. Much to the amusement of passers-by, I select a few fresh flowers for use as an air freshener. If you do this as well, look into the flower before taking it away and you will often see an ant at work on the nectar within. The gentle thing to do then is to leave the flower alone, for food comes before fragrance.

The thing that I wonder about is how Nature can reproduce millions of these flowers with the same amount of fragrance and nectar. Just what kind of quality control is inherent in this system ? I hope we never know the answer, for Mystery adds to divinity.

Success means.......

“Success means never having to wear a suit” is the quote on my favourite T-shirt. I believe in it.

Over the years when I have worn it outside home, the comments from friends, colleagues and strangers have been most noteworthy. At the Goa airport, for instance, a foreigner stared at it for a while, walked up to me and said simply, “I agree completely with that statement. I hope you do as well.”

Read the quote again and do reflect on it. I would be glad to hear your thoughts.

Unintended Consequences

Four years ago, in June 2006, the Government of Tamil Nadu announced that twenty kilos of rice would be available to each family that had a ration card, at a token price of Rs. 2. The Government did it to win votes and the battle against hunger and malnutrition. Lets look at the unintended consequences instead, that are now making themselves apparent.
Listening to Mariappa, my farmer in Javalagiri, is most illuminating. “Sir, “ he says with a mischievous smirk, “there is more money in each home now available for liquor and that is why men support this move to subsidise rice.” And are the full stomachs resulting in more incomes? “No sir, actually farm labour has become far less willing to work. Do you know, Sir, that subsidised rice is the reason for less milk being produced in our area?”
Unable to understand the connection, I look at him in bewilderment. “We don’t get farm labour to take the cows out to graze as we used to (this job is generally done by older farm workers, who are no longer capable of slogging in the field). Since they get their staple at virtually no cost now, and some occasional income, no one’s interested. And milk prices rarely rise, so we all make a loss on cattle. As a result, everyone’s selling off their cows. I see a milk shortage around the corner.”

Lets summarise : More rice at less price. More liquor. Less milk.
…and what has cheaper rice done to nutrition?

Most of the villages in Krishnagiri and many other districts of Tamil Nadu have, for centuries, had millets as their staple food. Millets are healthier & wholesome, and have far more fibre, which means that the carbohydrate in them is released slowly, giving the body time to absorb it well. Rice is primarily carb, and white rice has a high glycemic index (in other words, it breaks down quickly during digestion, releasing glucose into the bloodstream, increasing the pressure on the pancreas to do their job). The consequences of shifting a staple diet based on local millets to one based on rice boggles the mind. Since farming is hard work, farmers eat a lot, lot more than you or I do. When most of this food is carb, the net result we will see manisfest in this decade is rural obesity (and obesity-linked diseases) – a most unexpected phenomenon resulting from the best of intentions. Among the younger men in villages – those in their 20s and 30s - there is little love lost for farming and they get far less exercise than their parents, yet they eat the same amount as their parents do, so they are likely to be even worse off.
More rice at less price. More liquor. Less milk. More carb. Less health.

In 2009-10, Tamil Nadu doled out 38 lakh tonnes at Rs. 2 per kilo. That’s 38,00,000,000 kilos. With such numbers, can you smell a scam ? If you are wondering just how dhabas and street food in Bangalore is so cheap, you have the answer – the rice is being smuggled in. Stand by and watch the menfolk eat their lunch by the construction site nearest to you – the plate has a dour, nutrition-less mix of salt, loads of rice and rasam, the last-named a euphimism for water coloured with spice (and, at times, the odd piece of non-veg of uncertain origin).

More rice at less price. More liquor. Less milk. More carb. Less health. More scam.

And what about the impact on the Earth? Lets just take water as a resource. Rice, unlike most traditional millets, is water intensive; indeed rice and sugarcane are the two most water intensive crops. More water needed means more electricity required to pump it, more wastage, less water to go around.


More rice at less price. More liquor. Less milk. More carb. Less health. More scam. Less water.

In September 2008, the Government of Tamil Nadu reduced the price to Re 1. One packet of gutka more per kilo. Twenty packets per month.
More rice at less price. More liquor. Less milk. More carb. Less health. More scam. Less water. More gutka.

Now in July 2010, the Central Government has new norms. For the poorest of the poor, under a scheme called Antyodaya Anna Yojna, the quota of rice per card holder has gone upto 35 kg. For Tamil Nadu, it means about 6 lakh tonnes of rice more per year. At less price.

More rice at less price. More liquor. Less milk. More carb. Less health. More scam. Less water. More gutka. Meanwhile, more rice at less price just came in.

If Gurgaon is India's future, can I opt out please?

I travel to Gurgaon only because it reminds of just how lovely a city Bangalore still is. If Gurgaon has a soul, it is well hidden, beneath the monster towers that stick out of the sparse landscape like a sore forefinger. All these buildings – the glass-and-steel offices and the cement laden housing towers – reach for the sky in a travesty of justice, for just outside them lie low, flat, decrepit, asbestos roofed slums of those who provide the menial labour for the elite in the towers. They live in conditions – no water or sanitation worth its name - that can be only described as appalling and soul-wrenching, but then, let me remind you, Gurgaon has no soul to be wrenched.

If you take a walk outside the gated superblocks, the stench of decay and waste – human, animal and vegetable – hits you, but then you would be the only ‘person-like-us’ taking such a suicidal walk. For Gurgaon has little public transport and its ‘community autos’ carry ten humans on average at most times – the cattle class transport model. For the denizens of the towers, there are cars. And cars. And more cars.

Such hyper-development has unwelcome consequences. Not least, as Harrison Fraker, an architect at the University of California at Berkeley, argues, superblocks in effect become gated communities of privilege. The social consequences of such isolation (for those inside and out) take time to make themselves felt; there is however no doubt that such inequality creates deep and lasting divisions, that perpetuate themselves.

Most travellers to Delhi speak with bitterness of the rudeness, brazen guts and absence of manners of the average Delhi-walla (these attributes belonging largely to the city's post-partition residents, who now comprise three quarters of the population). Yet, even Delhi has some culture going for it - in its train museum, its art, the Delhi Haat and numerous other events that mark an urban space. Gurgaon has nothing.
So what do people do there?

Bill Bryson says in his entertaining book on the US : We used to build civilisations. Now we build shopping malls. .....and here's the Gurgaon story again. Each of its numerous malls are about the same - the stale air of Chinese food wafting along the numerous corridors of upmarket clothing stores. On my first visit to Gurgaon, I went to a couple of these malls in the evening, there being absolutely nothing else to do in the corporate guest house where I stayed. They were filled with teenagers and the yuppies of the city hanging around, in a rather poor imitation of post prandial bestial indolence. I am not one to sermonize to teens on building character or any of that sort of thing, yet it seemed somehow so wasteful, to live one's best years away in a mall, simply to belong to a group that did the same thing. All, while their parents made money, so that they could spend more time at the mall.

A proud resident of a gated superblock told me on my second visit that Gurgaon is the future of urban India. As I look around Bangalore and see the seventeen story supertowers in early stages of construction, he seems vindicated. If he is right, then I want to opt out. For now though, Bangalore stays my city.

When Moses sank

When a child recently killed himself after being beaten by the Principal of an elite Catholic institution in Calcutta (no such British institution can reconcile to Kolkata), the media began this whole beaten debate about ‘corporal punishment’ again. Why is a debate even necessary to punish those who use their force and armour against children?

Perhaps I am impractical. And, of course, I have never taught a rough, noisy, garrulous bunch of children. Yet, I know the pain.

In December 1977, my family left the little town of Digboi and came to Bangalore. I had then finished my sixth standard in a small school (the ‘school year’ then was Jan to Dec). This institution, run by the Sisters of Mount Carmel was more an extension of all the families that lived in the town – after all, everyone knew everyone else. I was considered by teachers to be a meek and studious chap, never prone to take risks, a ‘teacher’s pet’. Of course, i had never been punished.
I first joined Frank Anthony Public School, Bangalore, in January 1978, it being the only one in which I got admission, Mum and Dad (Dad, in particular) aspired to put me in a true-blue, academic-centric ‘Convent’, which Frank Anthony certainly wasn’t. Their opportunity came in June and I joined St Josephs Boys High School, the venerable public school of 19th Century vintage, with a distinguished alumni list and a place of pride on Museum Road . My brother threw his weight behind the decision: in his class at IIT, there were a number of Josephites, but none from Frank Anthony.

My first day at Josephs was the day school commenced after the summer vacation. It was a hot, dusty day in June, and I sat uncertainly amidst thirty five boisterous boys (it was the first time I had left a co-educational classroom), timid and hesitant in a huge, old classroom, the walls, desks and benches of which carried numerous holes, scars and slashes of creative expression; the scene could have inspired Rowling in her creation of Harry Potter’s institution.

The classes began well enough and I remember relaxing into my uncomfortable wooden bench. A teacher named Moses walked in for the Biology class. After taking the attendance, he asked if all students had done their homework, assigned to them before the school closed for the vacation. There was silence and everyone looked around at everyone else. The boy next to me whispered,” Have you done it?”. “No.” I whispered back. “Then stand up.”

I stood up with trepidation (as I write this, I can feel the emotion coming back thirty two years after the event). “I haven’t done the homework, Sir.” I stammered out, and possibly would have added that it was my first day at school, but such explanations could wait. Moses advanced down the aisle and hit me on the face.

It was a brutal blow, in more ways than one. I had never been hit in school before, was in an alien environment and Moses was a powerful fellow, a brute of a chap, and I reeled back and felt the tears swell. He ordered me out of the class, and I stood in the dark and cold corridor for the rest of the session, sobbing into a hankerchief and wondering just what I had done wrong.

It took me many months to reconcile myself to the school and to this man; I would sit in every class of his with fear. Moses was clearly the worst teacher one could have: of average intelligence and education, and lacking in competence, with limited knowledge of his subject and a menacing air that brooked no questions, he was brutal with students who could not stand up to him (he hit me twice in the succeeding years) and partial to those who showered him with goodies (there were many of those) or who chose to flatter him. I realise today that children can be very tough indeed and can adapt, on the outside, to difficult people: I actually tried to flatter him over the next few years, realising that my marks were in his hands, and even succeeded. Yet the scar never ever went away.

For years, I hated Biology as a subject, and have only, in the last decade, been fascinated by it, largely the result of my interest in wildlife. After leaving school, I often fantasised situations where I gave it back to Moses either physically or otherwise…..but abandoned any thought of retribution after reading Mahatma Gandhi’s biography by Louis Fischer.

Did any child complain about Moses? Some apparently did, and it seemed to boomerang on them. For, Josephs believed in the rule that the teacher was always right, particularly, if he happened to be Catholic. Some years ago, I heard that Moses was still there: the loss to human value by having such a teacher is incalculable.


There are thousands of children who have had to endure much more than this. If we wish to have them educated, and not just literate, the first step is to replace the hand that hurts, with the heart that seeks to understand. Calculus and trignometry (or indeed the digestive system) can wait.