Most of you have heard of Mid Day Meal scheme in India. In a poverty struck country like India, this is what attracts a large number of poor students to attend school.
Sadly it is discontinued in many states because of government's slow and steady exit from the fundamental duty of primary education.
Don't be surprised that almost all the countries in the world also follow this scheme, though not copied from India, and feed students taking care of their education as well.
I still remember a primary school in a remote part of Philippines beaming with students. The school had a thatched roof and rain waters that leaked through them made wooden benches look like skeletons. Since the school had no doors, it was normal for the wooden benches to vanish and students were satisfied with many teachers taking class under the trees inside the compound.
The school never had a post lunch session because every student will go home after his free meal. So much so the school authorities had to shift the meal from breakfast to lunch and then back to brunch timing.
This meal consisted of rice, rice and rice supplemented by yellow peas -- mostly imported. I wonder this scheme is in operation now since the world has come under threat of such educational initiatives by the food shortage.
Most of the stocks in many countries are running out and they have nowhere to go even with any amount of money they have. There isn't simply any food available after a certain period of time.
Many schools across the world received breakfast or lunch for their students under World Food Program. But even this aid is under serious threat. UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon has put the priority on feeding the hungry by closing a $755m funding gap for the UN's World Food Programme this year.
Countries like Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam along with Philippines are world wide leaders in rice production. Though most of their production is consumed in domestic market, much of their foreign exchange is from their annual harvest of rice. But the worldwide phenomenon of shrinking fields, government apathies, global warming, adverse weather and lack of incentives to continue in agriculture field is showing its ugly colour now.
Even the UN has acknowledged that the costs of production to the farmers are preventing them from taking up agriculture and thereby creating a shortage that the world will have to regret. The only way is to help them plant more by subsidizing their costs.
UN is offering $200m to farmers in the worst affected countries to boost food production in the medium term and is asking for a further $1.7bn to help countries with a food deficit to buy seeds.
Many countries in Africa are prone to famines and food shortage. UN humanitarian assistance is not enough to contain the starvation death in these countries.
No Indian remembers a famine in India because we have made sufficient progress to be leaders in production of some of the commodities. But what the Indians have studied in their school text books about Bengal famine or any other catastrophe is becoming real now.
In a globalised world, it is a wrong notion to say short supplies are limited to underdeveloped countries. In US, rationing is already in place, Europe farm commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has warned that EU food security could be severely threatened by the outdated principles underpinning Common Agricultural Policy and World Trade Organisation talks. Whatever the reasons are, we are facing an unprecedented crisis that nobody seems to be aware of.
Far away in the the United Nations, its Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, is setting up a task force to tackle the global food crisis. He has aptly said that the world faced "widespread hunger, malnutrition and social unrest on an unprecedented scale" because of soaring food prices. Time to act has long gone. It is time to react.
