CNN-IBN had first reported that the Government of India had imported approximately seven million tonnes of red wheat unfit for human consumption in the past two years, to be distributed through the PDS.

I found this article in the Indian Express and found it quite shocking.....


"One question about the continuing drama and deepening political crisis over the Indo-US nuclear deal fills me with agony: Americans know what they want out of this agreement, but do we?

The UPA government is fooling the nation by presenting the deal as a panacea for India’s chronic power scarcity. “Opponents of the deal are enemies of India’s development,” thundered Sonia Gandhi at a rally in Haryana. True, her party did a quick U-turn by putting out a rather creative interpretation on her combative remark — saying it was “Haryana-specific”! But rest assured that it will revive the “enemies of development” theme, now that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, with the apparent backing of the only person who wields real authority in the UPA coalition, has done yet another U-turn.

But will the deal really answer the ‘B’ part of the BSP (bijlee, sadak, paani) needs of our people? For an answer, turn to the ‘Integrated Energy Policy’ report of the Planning Commission’s expert committee in August 2006. It projects 11 different fuel-mix scenarios up to 2031-32 for achieving eight per cent annual GDP growth rate.

In none of these scenarios do we see the slightest hint of the “nuclear renaissance” that the prime minister has been so grandiloquently promising. The report says: “Even if a 20-fold increase takes place in India’s nuclear power capacity by 2031-32, the contribution of nuclear energy to India’s energy mix is, at best, expected to be 4-6.4 per cent.” This, even in the most “optimistic scenario” of supply of imported nuclear fuel, made possible through the deal. Remember that Dr Anil Kakodkar, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, was a member of this expert committee.

A person closely associated with the report who wishes to remain unnamed said to me: “There is no way in hell or heaven that India’s nuclear power capacity can go up from 4,000 MW at present to anywhere near the best-case projection of 63,000 MW by 2030. With or without the deal with the U.S., nuclear energy is not going to be the solution to India’s energy needs. The proponents of the deal know this. They are essentially selling a strategic alliance with the US in the name of energy security, since the common man understands daily bijlee shortages better than the intricacies of the 123 agreement.” Isn’t this deception, pure and simple?

And for this illusory promise of energy security, look what the UPA government is giving up in its bargain with America: India’s sovereign right to decide the future development of our nuclear weapons programme as per our own independent assessment of our national security needs. This compromise could well lead to a subservient strategic partnership, one requiring India to take shelter under America’s nuclear and missile-defence umbrella. Washington has never been coy about indicating that this is it wants.

On July 27, after the 123 agreement was concluded, Nicholas Burns, its chief American negotiator, was at his candid best: “This deal brings India back into the non-proliferation mainstream in a way it was never before.” In other words, it brings India into the NPT regime through the backdoor.

Last week, Burns said something equally alarming. Explaining why India is becoming more important for America in the 21st century, he predicted: “Twenty or 30 years from now, many Americans would say India is one of the two or three most important global partners — the way Japan and the European Union are today.”

Read it carefully, from India’s security perspective. After World War II, the US imposed a pacifist constitution on Japan that prevented it from having a standing army of its own, leave alone its own nuclear weapons. As far as Europe is concerned, NATO is a US-led security alliance and there is no doubt about who will call the shots in a time of crisis. So, should India become America’s junior partner in its global security architecture tomorrow, as Japan and EU are today? ................................................................................"

Excerpt from "The myth being sold about nuclear bijlee" by Sudheendra Kulkarni

Reeling out chilling statistics which revealed how India remained a land of poverty amidst plenty, Mr. Sainath said India had the fourth highest number of dollar-billionaires in the world; behind only the United States, Germany and Russia. “But, we are 126th in human development. This means that it is better to be a poor person in Botswana or the occupied territories of Palestine, both of which show superior human development indicators than India.”

Though India was an emerging tiger economy, life expectancy here was lower than in Bolivia — the poorest country of Latin America — Kazakhstan and Mongolia. India may have 100,000 dollar millionaires but 800 million in this country existed on less than Rs. 20 a day as per government data, he said, adding that “there is no such thing as Indian reality, there are Indian realities.”

Another contrast he brought out pertained to foodgrains intake. The last 15 years – which saw unprecedented prosperity among the rich – witnessed a decline in foodgrains intake. Quoting from the atlas of food security of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, he said in 1997-2002, India added more newly hungry millions than the rest of the world taken together.

“Hunger grew at a time when it declined in Ethiopia. A new restaurant opens every day in some city of this country but the average rural family is consuming 100 kg less than it did 10-15 years ago because that is the food availability situation.”

Mr. Sainath regretted the slow pace of tenancy reforms in the country. According to him, land reforms had been carried out properly by only a handful of States.

“It seems appalling to me that we can clear an SEZ in six months but we cannot do land reforms in 60 years across this country!”

He drew the attention of Parliamentarians to the growing expenditure on health as India now had the sixth most privatised health system in the world.

Another alarming phenomenon, he said, was the closure of as many as 3,500 banks in the rural areas — without which there would have been no Green Revolution in the first place — between 1993 and 2002. Ironically enough, while banks have systematically withdrawn from credit for the rural areas, they are increasingly wooing the upper middle classes. 
Courtesy: www.thehindu.com