Hunger, tycoons and little girls

A lot of ‘educated’ people (including, I fear, most of those who read this blog) will be surprised to hear that one of the most serious things that have been happening in the world lately is not the launch of some new video game or the defeat of Tiger Woods or some celebrity’s wardrobe malfunction or the inaugural preparations for the Beijing Olympics but that food prices (especially those of staple foodgrains like rice) have skyrocketed, causing alarm bells to start ringing in the highest places (not the sort of places where only Paris Hilton, BMWs and Louis Vuitton-type labels matter, though). Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, has warned that more than 100 million people have been lately pushed down to starvation levels (that would include many tens of millions in India, it goes without saying, though the food riots have not yet started in this country). He has scorned the piffling and callous charitable efforts of world leaders, and asked them to ‘put their money where they mouths are’ (this was reported in The Telegraph from Kolkata on April 15: see page 3). Anyone who wishes to read up a bit on the dimensions of the crisis can click on the following link:

http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/apr/12guest2.htm

Wonder of wonders, who should be among the first to respond positively (even if no more than with a token) but George W. Bush, President of the United States, who has at once sanctioned $200 million out of a special food aid fund to help out the Third World countries most urgently in need. The UN’s World Food Programme has declared it needs a minimum of $500 million by May 1 to carry out its emergency-aid plan successfully. To put these figures in perspective, compare with the billion-dollar jewellery that the wives of a hundred tycoons together wear at any major party in any big metro in the world, the several billion dollars that Anil Ambani recently raised from the Indian share market in one day, and the nearly trillion dollars that the five richest countries of the world spend together on ‘defending’ themselves against one another every year (one billion is a thousand million, a trillion is a thousand billion). Tells us something about mankind, doesn’t it? Incidentally, my reading of history assures me that things were exactly like that when famines loomed in the time of the Buddha 2,500 years ago (read Tagore’s poem called Nagarlakshmi), and even as recently as in 1943 in India. Food for thought, for those who insist on believing there’s been a lot of ‘progress’ all around us. Obsessing with fashion, thrills and technology, especially when one and one’s parents have never known genuine deprivation, and feel quite sure they never will, is very conducive to forgetting the more unpleasant things about reality (this is in connection with my last post about really looking at the world). As some of my favourite pupils will understand, this is one of the major reasons why I look askance at studying science – at least, as we understand studying science in India. Of course, agronomy and public health engineering are important branches of science too, but only relatively poor performers go for them under compulsion, don’t they? The elite study computers and management. And they don’t waste time thinking about famines; famines don’t happen to ‘people like us’. Only, they get terribly upset if someone in their families accidentally gets killed or kidnapped by terrorists fighting for the least privileged – ‘why on earth should these wretched criminals target innocent people like us? What is the government doing? Shoot all the vermin!’ There has never been a bigger crime than a hungry man raising a fist or a gun against the most privileged (many of whom have never done a day’s honest work in their lives – think of Paris Hilton again, or even a typical government clerk grown fat on bribes and his even fatter wife and children, or the cybercoolie in Bangalore who spends more than half the day either on orkut or in a pub).

I hope some readers will realize I am not changing the context when I mention that I was thrilled when my daughter told me to read a story she had liked in a comic-strip book. The story is about a little girl in rural Karnataka who lived with her grandparents. Her grandmother, a hardworking, simple, god-fearing, traditional housewife, loved to hear the girl reading out a serialized story in a certain magazine, and waited with bated breath for the next instalment. Once the girl happened to be away from home for a few days; she returned to find her grandmother in tears, because she had not been able to read the latest issue of the magazine in her grandchild’s absence, and she was too ashamed to ask any neighbour to read it out for her. She begged her granddaughter to teach her how to read. She proved to be a very eager and diligent pupil despite her advanced age, and in no time at all she was capable of reading her favourite magazine all by herself. The young teacher was delighted and very proud of herself, not least because her grandmother did the unthinkable: touched her feet as the ageless Indian tradition requires the good and diligent student to do to acknowledge the debt that can never be repaid (no question about who is older here; today's parents please note!)

My daughter pointed out to me that the story had been written by Sudha Murthy. And I discovered not only that my 11-year old daughter had liked the story enough to draw my attention to it, but she knew quite a bit about Sudha Murthy too (which is more than what most of my ‘good students’ in class 10 and 12 can boast of): that she is not merely N. R. Narayan Murthy’s wife but a very accomplished scholar, teacher, manager, social worker and writer – a full and admirable woman in her own right, not merely a useless, expensive and vain ornament as most rich men’s wives are. We had a talk about the sort of people who ought to be respected, with or without money, and she seemed to understand perfectly well my lament that the real trouble with the world is that most of the money in the world is in the hands of the wrong people. I am beginning to have some hopes for my daughter. And I hope also that I have been able to hint at why famine-like situations should develop in a world of apparent plenty, and what sort of mindsets (rather than capital, technology and media gimmicks) are needed in large numbers in order to make a difference for the better.

(P.S., April 18: After reading the above post, Rajdeep, from Nagoya, Japan, sent in the following relevant and highly interesting link: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html

Thanks, Rajdeep.

April 19: By the way, doing a Google search with the keywords 'current world food crisis' will yield very interesting results!)