What an eyesore!
Editor,
Lately in my visit to NEIGRIHMS hospital, I am overwhelmed by its excellent ambience and the hygienically maintained environs. The out-patients and their attendants can fully relish the sprawling complex and freely use the toilets with uninterrupted running water, which are conveniently located at every floor; unlike the Shillong civil hospital, where I had to shell out money for utilizing the toilets as an out-patient! In sum, kudos to NEIGRIHMS!
But on the flip side, on departing from NEIGRIHMS, on the left side of the main gate , I saw rows of endless retail stalls spreading their riots of merchandise beside a drain and on this sewer piles of thrash like used plastic bottles and the like were heaped, I don’t know if some good souls will ever care to offload those unsightly spectacles? And, for good measure, where shall the subsequent monsoon rains carry the garbage and deposit it? Given the fact that NEIGRIHMS is fast becoming a hub of qualitative health care centre in the North-East where I see even people from distant Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and others are preferring to come here to seek medical assistance due to its salubrious climate and peaceful environs. And which is why many interested visitors are visiting this health Institute.
Hence, to address this problematic issue which is becoming the only eyesore of this august establishment is perhaps for the management of NEIGRIHMS and the local durbar of the area to work in tandem on how to effectively and stringently deal with the nuisance in question. I hope that when I revisit this Institution such a grotesque sight will vanish lock stock and barrel!
Yours etc.,
Jerome K Diengdoh,
Shillong-2
India’s hunger index a concern
Editor,
Hunger has been described by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen as ‘quiet violence’. Every day 3 out of 4 Indians have to bear this quiet violence in their daily lives. The 2023 report on food security and nutrition which was released by the United Nations on December 12, this year said that 74.1 percent of Indians (over a billion people) could not afford a healthy diet in 2021.
The report from the Food and Agriculture Organisation, a specialised agency of the UN and other UN agencies has estimated that India’s proportion of undernourished population stands at 16.6 per cent during 2020-22. This report has echoed the 2023 Global Hunger Index which was released a couple of months ago. India’s position in the GHI has slid into a horrific 111th rank among 125 countries.
Though the Centre did not accept either of the reports, some experts pointed out a contradiction between the government’s denial and the government’s own estimate that around 813 million people require food assistance. Moreover, last month, the Union cabinet extended the scheme for 5 more years.
On the UN estimation of over a billion underfed Indians versus government’s estimation of 813 million, Raj Shekhar, national coordinator with the Right to Food Campaign, a non-government network campaigning for food security said, “The 813 million estimate is based on the 2011 census – the next census is overdue by two years. Without the new census, many needy, vulnerable people won’t have the ration cards that will entitle them to PMGKAY benefits.”
Economists and food rights activists pointed out that more than 10 crore deserving Indians would not get the benefit of the 5-year extension of the free rations programme for the poor because of the government’s failure to conduct the long-due population census.
Interestingly, amid rising hunger and poverty, India has produced more billionaires than many developed countries. As per the data from the World of Statistics, India is home to 169 billionaires – the third highest in the world after the USA (735) and China (495). India, where over a billion people could not afford a healthy diet, has more billionaires than developed countries like Germany (126), Russia (105), Italy (64), Canada (63), UK (52), Australia (47) and Japan (40).
Manmohan Singh once said, “India happens to be a rich country inhabited by very poor people.” It highlighted the contrast between our resources and poverty. The time has come to say that India happens to be a country of very poor people inhabited by many billionaires. It will highlight a glaring inequality in India.
As per the 2022 World Inequality Report, the economic reforms adopted by India have mostly benefited the top 1%. It has been observed that the deregulation and liberalisation policies implemented in India since the mid-1980s have led to “one of the most extreme increases in income and wealth inequality in the world”. It suggested that a modest progressive wealth tax should be levied on multimillionaires as it could generate significant revenues for the government because of the high concentration of wealth.
Contrary to the prescription to levy more tax on the super rich, write-off of huge amounts of bank loans has been done for some rich businessmen without much ado while subsidies to the poor are questioned as rewdis.
The report also points out that 31.7% of children of our country under 5 years of age are victims of stunted growth. Our policy makers must pay heed to what the former World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim had said on hunger and child stunting in India a few years ago, “This is the bottom line: if you walk into the future economy with 40 percent of your workforce having been stunted as children, you are not going to be able to compete.” Our first priority should be to improve the health of our children.
Yours etc.,
Sujit De,
Kolkata