India is on a perilous path. A slowdown is intrinsically an economic term that requires honest amplification. But there ought now to be no two opinions on the grim reality ~ India is hungry for all the starry-eyed projection of $ 5 trillion… It is cause for alarm that the country has been ranked 102nd in the Global Hunger Index, perhaps a testament to the fact that the predominant majority is wallowing in the mire of poverty.

Judging by the parameter of hunger, it reflects dismally on successive dispensations that India has been ranked the lowest among South Asian nations, its position having slipped from 93 in 2015. Chiefly, the downward curve has been progressive over the past four years ~ from the 100th position in 2017 to 102nd in 2019. The hungry quest for sustenance has posited India way behind the BRICS nations ~ Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

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The position is distinctly better to the west of the Radcliffe Line. Pakistan, once the only country in South Asia to rank below India, has moved ahead to the 94th rank this year. An issue, that is closer to the bone and the stomach, has been overshadowed in the bilateral kerfuffle over the status of Kashmir. The Food Security Act has been reduced to irrelevance in terms of feeding the people, let alone the eradication of hunger. An ignoble handling of the crisis has very nearly trashed a noble objective.

What will they know of Article 370 who only hunger know, not to mention malnutrition and starvation? Which is not to forget the revelation that food that is unfit for consumption masquerades as the midday meal in schools. Altogether, the failure of the authorities is nothing short of a collective disgrace. The facts thrown up by the accurate data collection has been greeted with a measure of imperviousness that is revolting.

The subtext must be that even the Public Distribution System has stumbled in large parts of the country. It was proven in West Bengal during the food riots of 1966 and 2007 that foodgrain, earmarked for the PDS and the poor, makes a round-trip to the open market, there to be sold at ballooing rates to those who can afford it. Deeply critical must be the finding that the Global Hunger Index has ranked India with the world’s highest rates of what they call “child wasting”, specifically children with too low a weight for height.

The government ought to be riveted to the social underbelly rather than other issues. The report has placed India’s child-stunting rate at 37.9 per cent ~ the highest among the countries that were assessed. The fineprint would point to a woeful lack of food and nutrition. Sad to reflect, the second does not figure in the Food Security Act. Bracketed with Yemen and Djibouti, India is in the alsoran category. The future of the nation is endangered.