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| Kathmandu, Saturday November 08, 2003 Kartik 22, 2060. |
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Food politics
By PRAMAN SHRESTHA
- First, people must have some thing to eat, then eat what
the body needs (balanced food) and then only comes the choice of food one eats. When you
have nothing to eat, what do you do?
I have never come across a situation that forces people to
starve to death. Some may die of poisonous food that claims lives. While others may die of
diseases caused by food itself. This, I think, is due to lack of opportunities to work.
Some years ago, Jumla, Humla and other remote and neglected districts faced a situation
when no leader or civilised Nepali preferred to visit these districts but enjoyed reading
stories sitting in Kathmandu about the deaths of starving children, women and the poor.
Recently, media and development workers have created a sense
of insecurity. People in remote villages, as reported in local dailies, do not have even
daal-bhaat to eat. Media reports made the people feel humiliated, saying people ate
millet, corn, buckwheat breads with potato/bean soup, etc.
That Karnali, a relatively dry and mountain region runs short
of food-grains, cannot be overemphasised. In the past few decades, the government and some
donor agencies provide seasonal humanitarian aid in the form of subsidy. But this has
imprinted negative image of Karnali in the minds of the people. It is slowly breeding a
false impression that the subsidised foodgrains are of low quality. But many spend their
hard-earned money to buy rotten rice. It is rotten because of the poor storage system. Why
do the media write when people find rice to buy and eat, even if it is rotten?
Secondly, the subsidised food has reduced the cost as well as
the production of the locally-grown cereals, and hence slowly discouraged to grow what
they are growing for centuries, which has in turn created acute food scarcity in the
region.
And this is the reality. It is too easy to realise the
situation if an educated leader tries to understand it. But even after decades of the
Panchayat and democratic systems, no government has given priority to local crops. Nor has
any development agency made efforts to empower the local people.
Thus, the aid system should have given priority to the local
cereals. And it should, in no way, make the cereals meaningless to grow by flooding the
subsidised grains into the region.
Currently, the issue is the seasonal migration from Achham,
Dadeldhura, Doti, Kalikot, etc to India. Obviously, the travel to the neighboring country
would not have mattered much had the local food production met the demand. Canadians and
Americans produce food more than the demand. They dump the excesses after the new harvest.
Were they Nepalese they would, too, have compelled their countries to seek food aid.
A large number of educated Nepalis are leaving their country.
Why is that? Poverty, food shortage or something else ?
But youths are migrating from Karnali due to insecurity of
life. The increasing trend of migration out of the villages is mainly due to the security
reasons. Youths are no longer safe in their own community, at home, and schools.
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