“........Most dishonest of all is the “there-is-no-money” line. The country spends Rs. 10,000 crore on a new airport. There's Rs. 40,000 crore or more for the Commonwealth Games. There's Rs. 60,000 crore happily lost in the spectrum scam. There's Rs. 500,000 crore in write-offs under just three heads for the super-rich and the corporate sector in the current Union budget. But funds for the hungry are hard to come by. What would it cost to universalise the PDS? Pravin Jha and Nilachal Acharya estimate that if rice/wheat were made available to all Indians at Rs. 3 a kilo, it would add Rs.84,399 crore to the food subsidy in coming budgets. That's about one-sixth of the tax write-offs for the wealthy in this year's budget. (Other estimates place the added expenditure each year at no more than Rs. 45,000 crore).
What will be the costs of not finding the money — in a country which ranks at 66 among 88 in the Global Hunger Index? In a nation whose child malnourishment record is worse than that of sub-Saharan Africa? A country now ranking 134 in the United Nations Human Development Index below Bhutan and Laos?
The same country that has 49 dollar billionaires in the Forbes list. (Many of whom receive government freebies in diverse forms. Some for their IPL involvements). If a government will not even try to ensure that no citizen goes hungry, should it remain in power? Or should it, at the very least, state honestly that the food security of every Indian is neither its aim nor its intent? Why tag ‘food security' to a bill that will legitimise the opposite? How can we call something a ‘right' if everyone does not have it?...
നാലാമത്തെയും ആറാമത്തെയും കമന്റുകള് പ്രത്യേകം ശ്രദ്ധിക്കണേ.. സായിനാഥിനെ മലര്ത്തിയടിച്ചിരിക്കുന്നു....ഈ ജനുസ്സുകളെ ഇവിടെ ബൂലോഗത്തും കണ്ടിട്ടില്ലേ? പല പേരില്? പല വേഷത്തില്?
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ഭക്ഷ്യസുരക്ഷയുടെ എ.പി.എല്, ബി.പി.എല്, ഐ.പി.എല് കളികള്
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