With food grain crisis around the world getting worse it is going to be some real tough time for huge number of people. So lots of people will have to skip their meals (the price of a Kg of rice has increased almost 7Rs in last one year, it is now 20Rs kg, this is the case of most food items), though situation in India has not gone out of hand as in some cities around the world where there have been reports of ‘food riots’. The reason for this crisis seems to be compounding factors of reduction of land used for agriculture as well as impetus on cash crops (like the recent biofuel in many parts of the world), global warming leading to unpredictable climate, silting due to overuse of pesticide, population increase, dwindling employment opportunities and so on. Some in West are also blaming India and China for these crises, since more people in these countries now have purchasing power and so the consumption has increased. I found it very funny this argument. It is true when people’s power to purchase better their consumption and need increases, but ignoring the wasteful culture of people who have more is not for me intriguing, it reflection of time we live in (the snap taken at Madurai).
I recall when I was kid food was short in supply, and so we had to limit our intake (my Tiffin box to school mostly consisted of roti/idli &sugar. Sundays used to be Non veg). The idea of unlimited supply of food was alien. I used to be quite thin, I recall when in one of the class test the question how many ribs humans have, I put my hands inside the shirt to count!!!. It was only when I was 9-10 we had a huge change we suddenly became relatively rich and indeed the consumption increased. But wasting food was considered serious offense, even a sin. Everything in the plate has to be finished or face some serious consequence.
Later in my life I had to grapple the issue of wasting food, you couldn’t store food for too long in summer, and throwing food made me very uncomfortable. Then I came with the theory that nothing can be wasted since when you throw food it is eaten by other organisms. Few months I lived with this thinking, something was not feeling right soon I understood that the energy used is an important aspect. Right from production to transportation to cooking all that add up to serious energy consumption and so if you are wasting food then you are wasting huge energy.
I have seen that people in West consume less but waste a lot, they store so many things that they forget what they have!!. It is culture of waste. In many programs shown in TV I have had glimpse of this mindset. I guess rather than blaming India and China they should look at their own backyard.
Postscript: In West they throw pie during protest!!. In this part of the world we have heard of rotten egg or tomato, things that are waste, people here don’t throw food, that is unthinkable. Pie is edible, few months back I tasted it (too costly, nothing great). I checked the recipe and found that main ingredient include flour, butter, sugar and desired fruit like say apple (quite popular), pumpkin, strawberry and so on.
Clearly what they throw around is actually food for millions of people.
…..continuing with monkey fights in cricket, wasn’t it Plato who said some 2500 years ago that “to be merely an athlete is to be nearly a savage”. Now we know what attracts Coca Cola Pepsi!!!!!
Plato also had something for “merely a musician”. It is difficult to agree to some of what he wrote (this blogger believes that an athlete is epitome of physical perfection and determination)…anyway it is a very interesting read, most times absolutely brilliant. But then Socrates, his influence, was amazing. I guess this period of European history was the most vibrant and accommodating. It is not surprising that, centuries later Renaissance happened in this very region. I read somewhere that Plato could have been to gangetic plane (now India). Is it true? Then he might have bumped into Buddha!!!
