Food & Hunger

Data Point 1

Despite significant economic progress, 1/4 of the nation's population earns less than the government-specified poverty threshold of $0.40/day. Official figures estimate that 27.5% of Indians lived below the national poverty line in 2004-2005. A 2007 report by the state-run National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) found that 25% of Indians, or 236 million people, lived on less than 20 rupees per day with most working in "informal labour sector with no job or social security, living in abject poverty.

Source - Poverty in India report in Wikipedia.

Data Point 2

A study done by the government on food wastage in India estimated that an astounding 58,000 crores was the amount of food wasted in India due to lack of inadequate post-harvest infrastructure.
More details of the study done by an honorable minister can be found here

(Well the very fact that he took the initiative to measure this makes him honorable)

Math

So lets do some real eazee simple dumb math here….56000crores of food..& 236 million hungry people…(Ouch..why did they invent two different number systems to make our lives complicated).

Anyway…Here goes
236 million * 20 rupees/day*365days = 172280 crores

If god gave us ‘chappad phad ke itna saara khokha’ there goes India’s poverty…poof..!!
At the same time..we are actually wasting about 58,000 crores of food.feeding rats, feeding all sorts of micro-organisms who feast on rotting food…Bravo.

Even if we could not save the Tiger we are doing really well on other biological diversity measures.
So if we did not waste this food..could we make a significant dent on our poverty situation…as much 1/3rd of India’s poverty without relying on God’s largesse ?

Gyaan

The skeptics will be laughing saying here’s a guy who has never as much as bought ‘anaaj ki bori’ from a shop who is giving ‘gyaan’ on food processing.
But here are the simpleton’s thoughts…

• So if we managed our grain in FIFO..first in first out in our granaries; could so much of it be wasted ?
• Would adding refrigeration to our granaries be a bad investment?
• Eat local…there is a reason why each part of India developed its own cuisine. A lot of food gets transported from one part of the country to another and wasted. Could that be reduced a little bit ..not much I realize since the Haryana and Punjab belt are the granaries of India.
• The article talks about tax benefits for food processing industries..I am afraid it will only be used by the MTR types who will use it for packaging and selling food to urban India. What we need is a better storage and distribution capability, something the government largely owns I think.
• Make ‘ration’ shops compete with each other by allowing private distribution channels who can buy from granaries and regulate quantity they buy (so that in harder times they don’t hoard).