Question

save food grains and papers

Answer 1

 


The state of food stored inside the godowns is not much better. Most government storages are damp and dark and breed rodents, insects and moisture, resulting in quantity and quality losses.

Externally, however, the FCI's food godowns are better protected than the nation's borders. Its godowns are out of bounds for the public and the media is treated like a pariah by the FCI brass. INDIA TODAY's repeated attempts to talk to them were in vain.

The Ministry of Food and Civil Supplies, which is far more accessible and open to discuss the issue, dismisses much of the wastage in the name of food security. Says Barnala: "Food security is as important as national security. It's always better to have more than what you need."

Set in the scarcity psychosis of the '60s, this concept of food security equates higher food production with better food security. But one doesn't have to go further than the works of last year's Noble laureate Amartya Sen to realise the fallacy of this production-centric belief in food security.

Sen's celebrated work on the causes of famines argues that targeting only production and not consumption as the goal for food security leads to a situation where surplus and starvation co-exist a situation not alien to India.

Experts are unanimous that the correction of the imbalance between plentiful food production and deficient food consumption can be best achieved through prevention of food wastage.

The prescription for that is simple: stock less and store better. But as Gulati puts it "the simplicity of prescription is directly proportional to the difficulty in its implementation." Here is why that's so: