Where is Hunger

Khandwa: Worm-eaten, full of dirt, used as animal feed — this is the food for the poor, the red winter wheat imported from Australia.

What is imported is actually the shell of the red winter wheat. It is not definitely the best kind of wheat available and is being given out through the public distribution system for the poorest, who can't afford to buy wheat from the market.

It is being given to the country's children in anganwadis, the old and the disabled and the young and the penniless.

Says a local of Khandwa, Gulabo, "This wheat is very bad. We have never eaten it before and the children complain of indigestion.''

However, the kitchen fires must be kept burning somehow and anyhow. A Dalit couple in Nagotar Vishnu and Kailash certify to this. Their combined income is Rs 50 a week.

The NREGA has made a difference, but no so much that they can choose to buy food grains from the market and so they make do with lal gehu (red wheat).

Says Vishnu, "My children fall sick after eating this grain. You can't do anything with it — can't make rotis or halwa, but what can we do? Rice is so expensive, wheat is also so expensive. We have to eat this. We don't have a choice."

But quality is not their only concern.

"By the time we clean the grains, 14 kilos becomes just 11 kilos," says Kailash.

Many villagers did not have seeds for their fields and they sowed lal gehu instead, using their wheat quota to cultivate their land rather than as food.

Another local, Laxman, says his hopes of a good harvest wilted and his next crop of soyabean also saw a stunted growth because of cultivating lal gehu.

"I sowed lal gehu, watered the crop, treated it with fertilisers and pesticides, but it just did not grow. I let my bullocks eat the crop," says he.

In the weekly village haat, the small dealers don't have any wheat to sell — at Rs 13 a kg, it's out of their reach and so is rice. Villagers go in for broken rice instead.

At Rs 10 a kilo, the rate of broken rice has also gone up, but it's the best compromise.

Says a village woman, "We have to fill our stomachs and so we have switched to broken rice. Earlier we did not eat this."

The country was told it needed to import food grains for the poor, but what the poor got was the worst quality of red winter wheat — sometimes used as animal feed in the west.

Inspite of the wheat imports, the quota of food grains for the poor has gone down, from 35 kilos to 23 kilos.

Says a Government food officer, "We are distributing imported wheat, but just 18 kgs of wheat and merely five kgs of rice."

The biggest irony perhaps is that local wheat is available with the farmers, but farmers like Patel — who had 150 acres of land and one room in a house filled with 400 quintals of wheat says that he is waiting to sell it at a better price.

Another farmer says he has 20 quintals and that it's unfair that the Government does not buy from them, yet pays a better price to farmers abroad.

The betrayal is too deep for words and it is a failure that even reason cannot justify — low grade wheat imported for the poorest while the stocks of Indian farmers begin to rot and hunger grows.