Reading about the current countrywide shortage of formula baby food in the USA brought back poignant memories of more than half a century
ago. I was an infant then, and heard this story from my mother when I was a few
years older. Back in 1964, when my father was pursuing a PhD in geology at
Indiana University Bloomington and doing a field tour of the Rocky Mountains,
there was an acute shortage of baby food in India (well, at least in West
Bengal), and my grandfather had to run from pillar to post to find tins of
Ostermilk (it was the Amul Spray of that era) for me. Meanwhile my father was
travelling with professor and classmates, and one of their vans carried a huge
tank of fresh milk, refilled every morning, overhead. They drank gallons of it
each, and threw away the rest on the grass or into waterfalls. My dad was
apparently horrified. He wrote a touching letter lamenting what he had seen
back home, and my grandfather, his father in law, apparently used that letter
to shame some low level government functionaries into allotting us a couple of
baby food tins. How history comes full circle! I am glad I have lived long
enough to see it, and if only it had not involved babies, I would have sighed
contentedly and murmured to myself ‘Serves them right’. Advanced country indeed!
Sunday, May 22, 2022
Baby food shortage: history repeated upside down!
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3 comments:
Dear Sir,
I recall stories which my uncle ( " Pishemoshai ") had told me, out of his experiences of living that period as a young boy of 7-8.
The sirens of Government Vans/ Army trucks would act as signals to hundreds of impoverished children in remote villages of West Bengal ( Purulia in his story), all lining up for a single meal of the day, unaware of why and how such a crisis had engulfed them. At that time, Government also used ' Milo' , as a substitute for milk, which could be mixed with water and consumed, without any requirement of milk. Further , even during such a period of crisis affecting the young ones, there was no equitable distribution of Government ration, rather hoarding and preferential treatment were done. Also, this crisis that affected so many young vulnerable kids , hasn't been much documented or researched upon or even ' romanticized ' ( like the Naxal Movement of 1970s) , thereby it still doesn't occupy a prominent place in the popular discourse. Though, that shan't undermine the struggle and pain those numerous young kids had to endure in their childhood, supposedly the best time of one's life.
Interesting comment, Sir.
With your vast and superior knowledge of Economics, I am sure you understand supply chains far better than I can ever hope to. So, I have no doubts that you are right.
Is it what you feel or is that the way other people feel in India, too, these days?
Well, no disagreement that India has developed a lot since I was a child and that the US has been on a decline for a while although I have not been there yet and don't feel particularly compelled to visit anytime soon unless it is work-related.
Since you are much older than I am, I am sure that India has changed and developed enormously since your childhood beyond even my wildest dreams.
However, maybe we should also pause and think about the time just a while ago when India had to stop producing Covid vaccines because the US stopped exporting the necessary raw materials. Having worked in the automobile sector before, I also know that many components of modern cars simply cannot be produced in India because the raw materials are not available and the cost of sending them to India neutralizes the lower labor costs in India unless they are sent from a neighboring country. Well, things may have dramatically changed because this information is as old as 2013.
And, perhaps we should not forget that the market value of just one US multinational company is roughly the same as the GDP of India.
(I also think that billionaires are curiously optimistic people. They do things like buying up land on Mars before we have even landed there. And, ordinary human beings have to make do with daily mundane drudgery.)
I am curious about how you are likely to feel if people in the US or any other country felt the same way during a future pandemic or any other situation when our beloved land is facing steep challenges?
To Koustav,
Thank you for recounting your uncle's lived experience. You and I seem to share, somewhat, the same worldview. I like to think of the joys and sufferings of individuals as individuals, not as statistics, no matter how numerous they are. And I have the same mocking disdain for those armchair radicals, secure in their middle-class patrimonies, who loftily declaim that all such horrors will simply vanish one fine morning at the wave of a magic wand called 'socialist revolution'! As if we have not accumulated monstrous historical records in enormous quantity to the contrary... only children and sociopaths believe in magic wands, whether they are six or sixty.
Rajdeep,
I merely believe that a) extreme mass poverty has greatly diminished in India over my lifetime. Things, I am sure, could have been much better done, but that I have adumbrated in several earlier posts. b) Much of America's relative 'advancement' was a matter of propaganda, in which ONE sector, alas, they still continue to dominate global discourse. c) They have definitely declined according to many key indicators of social development since the 1970s, according to their own studies. That's all.
I shall be glad if more readers are prompted to recount little relevant family histories.
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