The World Bank knows. The Indian Supreme Court knows. Heck, even India’s Planning Commission knows it!
But India’s Food Minister K.V. Thomas doesn’t know. That India’s food distribution is corrupt, inefficient and above all looted by the likes of Thomas and his ilk along with their “Gangs of Hungerpur”.
About 5 percent to 10 percent of the food meant for the poor is lost, and that is due to mismanagement, Thomas said in an interview at his office in New Delhi. The World Bank pegged the figure at 58 percent, in a 2011 report based on government data, and blamed it on graft and wastage. A Supreme Court fact- finding commission declared in the past year that the distribution system in major states had failed in its mission.
5% vs 58%. That is how stark the difference is between what this Government says and what happens! It is not because they don’t know the facts “because India is complex, large.. blah blah blah”. It is because their falsehoods serve as great alibis! The people – the looted – don’t rebel. The media – compromised and corrupt – doesn’t question. So falsehoods work as great alibis. And the Thomases of India can’t have enough of them.
Here is the nonsensical situation in India when it comes to food – don’t know what to call it really – Shortage????!!
- India already has a stockpile of 82 million tonnes of grains.
- This year the Government will spend another $14 billion on stockpiling yet more. Not apparently that it can be distributed to the poor, but so it can rot or be sold at an arbitrage by ministers and their gangs.
- In UP alone, in the last decade, food worth $14.5 billion has been LOOTED! Just one state.
The situation is such that even the Government bodies recognize the rot – not just of the food, but of the system that distributes the food!!
The Planning Commission, a governmental body that assesses the country’s resources in the struggle to improve living conditions, asked the World Bank in 2005 to survey India’s social security safety nets. The commission had already found that 36 percent of subsidized grains were “siphoned off the supply chain.” In fiscal 2004, $791 million worth of food, out of $1.4 billion set aside for 16 states, didn’t reach the poor.
What do you do with such corrupt? Ideally these people should be lynched and left destitute on an island to die of hunger. But for now, they need to thrown out of the political corridors on their head!!
