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Science Forum Index » Energy Forum » Starvation looms in Delhi
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| Author |
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| habshi |
 Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 6:57 pm |
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Guest
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excerpt
And in Bangladesh. Money cant buy food which isnt there ,
people have to die , and this is after a record grain harvest of 2b
tonnes last year. And why does it need half a million troops ?
equivalent to 5m for India , Who is going to attack Bangladesh and
take charge of 150m starving people?
excerpts
On Thursday in a village in Patua, Rajshahi, a
hungry farmer losing control of himself killed his two infant
daughters and attempted to kill himself by swallowing poison,
according to a report in Friday’s New Age. The superintendent of
police, Rajshahi, said the man did so due to ‘food deficit’ which in
plain words means hunger. Last week in Mirsarai upazila a
poverty-stricken day labourer Azizul Huq, who could not find work for
days and could no longer bear the pangs of hunger, tried to kill his
three minor children by burying them alive at night. Happily the
screams of the children drew some rescuers to the scene, in time for
the children to be saved. A Bengali daily yesterday published the
story of three poor self-employed vendors of the city (one a woman)
who in the past were earning enough to feed themselves and their
families adequately but are now finding it extremely hard to buy
enough food and are therefore eating less. This can be said to be the
story of millions in Bangladesh today. They cannot even protest or
draw the authorities’ attention to their hunger. The emergency laws
are there to put the protesters in their place.
What adds to the agony of the people is that they do not know how
long they must suffer, up to what level the prices of essentials will
go up and where the end is. The government not only could not
anticipate the food crisis or adopt safeguards but failed to act
promptly even after the crisis was an undeniable reality. It blamed
the media, then it blamed the rising food grain price abroad, and
finally admitted the crisis somewhat but tried to round off its rough
edges by inventing the phrase hidden hunger.
....
Dhaka, April 17 (Reuters): More than half a million
Bangladeshi troops
have been ordered to eat potatoes in an attempt to ease the impact of
surging rice and wheat prices.
Potatoes are not traditionally on the menu for Bangladesh’s 140
million people but army chief General Moeen U. Ahmed and the country’s
army-backed interim government have ordered a change in diet because
the tubers are now cheaper and more abundant.
World prices of rice, wheat, edible oil and pulses have almost doubled
over the last year, increases that poorer Asian countries can ill
afford. Bangladesh was hit last year by two severe floods and a
cyclone that destroyed around 3 million tonnes of food grains, raising
fears of a possible famine.
“The daily food menu now includes 125 grams of potato for each soldier
irrespective of ranks,” government agriculture adviser Choudhury
Sajjad Karim quoted the army chief as saying today.
Potatoes will also be eaten daily by air force and navy personnel
along with other regimental services including police, which together
have more than 500,000 members.
125 g is just one medium size potato. But that is good news.
They will be so famished they will start eating each other, to the
relief of their adversaries. |
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