The net capita daily availability of food grain in India today is less than what it used to be in 1955-58,noted journalist P Sainath informed a gathering at the S M Joshi Sabhagruha on Friday. The Ramon Magsaysay winner was in the city to be part of NGO Parisars annual lecture series. This year the topic of discussion was Wages of inequality - farm crisis,food crisis and policy. Sainath also spoke of constructed inequality in the country . We have three times as many billionaires as all the Scandinavian countries put together. Though out of the ten billionaires on the Forbes list four are Indians we still rank 134 when it comes to the Human Development Index. That is the level of inequality that the country reflects, Sainath said. Commenting on the data from the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector that reveals that 836 million people in the country earn less than Rs 20 a day,he said,If you analyse this figure closely,out of these 836 million people,88 per cent of all adivasi and dalit communities belong here. The dismal percentage of malnourished children,which is 42 per cent in India,is also a cause of worry,he said adding that the shift to growing cash crops has contributed to the agrarian crisis by accentuating the losses by 15 to 16 per cent in debt terms . You cant eat vanilla and digest cotton, he said adding that nearly 50 per cent of the agricultural credit goes to big corporations in urban areas.
