Poor in India Starve as Politicians Steal $14.5 Billion of Food

[Recursion]

Ugh. Stuff like this is why people in international development burn out so quickly.

This also gets to my hobby-horse that hunger is no longer because of insufficient food production, but because corrupt governments and businesses use food as a weapon against poor people.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-28/poor-in-india-starve-as-politicians-steal-14-5-billion-of-food.html

Ram Kishen, 52, half-blind and half- starved, holds in his gnarled hands the reason for his hunger: a tattered card entitling him to subsidized rations that now serves as a symbol of India’s biggest food heist.

Kishen has had nothing from the village shop for 15 months. Yet 20 minutes’ drive from Satnapur, past bone-dry fields and tiny hamlets where children with distended bellies play, a government storage facility five football fields long bulges with wheat and rice. By law, those 57,000 tons of food are meant for Kishen and the 105 other households in Satnapur with ration books. They’re meant for some of the 350 million families living below India’s poverty line of 50 cents a day.

Instead, as much as $14.5 billion in food was looted by corrupt politicians and their criminal syndicates over the past decade in Kishen’s home state of Uttar Pradesh alone, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The theft blunted the country’s only weapon against widespread starvation -- a five-decade-old public distribution system that has failed to deliver record harvests to the plates of India’s hungriest.

“This is the most mean-spirited, ruthlessly executed corruption because it hits the poorest and most vulnerable in society,” said Naresh Saxena, who, as a commissioner to the nation’s Supreme Court, monitors hunger-based programs across the country. “What I find even more shocking is the lack of willingness in trying to stop it.”

[Volaris]

1. Holy CHRIST...

And I thought OUR politicians were some corrupt motherfuckers...

[glowing]

3. They did just cut head start, WIC, and SNAP.. Plus

the welfare reform of the 90's has left a hole in the safety net along with funding for HUD and section 8 housing to have waiting list of 2 to 5 yrs. no, I think most people in power like it, dance with the devils who brought them, and forget what humanity and being human means.... Especially if they are a different class or "caste".

1 out of every 4 children in the US are living in poverty and probably another 1/2 are living in a home that could crash around them if their parents miss just one paycheck... Only 1% is doing well and they are ruining the world that they run and don't care one bit about it!

I think it's just as bad that we have stores full of food and food that is literally thrown away from not being bought in the grocery stores, yet we have children and elderly and people in between going to bed hungry. I think it's disgusting that their are enough places for everyone who is homeless to have a place to call home, yet the homes, apts, condos remain empty due to lack of funds. I think it's disgusting that nearly 50,000 people die every year from a lack of health care that could have been prevented or treated by Drs, but lack of funds and insurance keeps them from receiving it. I think it's disgusting that we spend nearly $800 billion in defense budgeting and keep making unsused tanks, planes, and missiles which cost millions of dollars to produce, yet the soldiers and their families qualify for food stamps and are sent into illegal, amoral wars with no end in sight, for no real sense of purpose, and with absolutely NO support for when they come home after their 3 to 7 tours. I think it's disgusting that the worldwide politicians have thrown away their people for political expediency and bribery's by the elite; which has caused a race to the bottom and a Fuedal society complex far and wide. I find it disgusting that our working wages don't equal a living wage. I think obtaining education by indenting oneself to the system before even making a mark in the world is dangerous and disgusting.

I'm not sure they are doing all that much that is different than the US; just my perspective.

[JI7]

5. yeah, but here it is done legally

[BillyRibs]

2. India Is The

Worst represented democracy in the world. 1 M.P. per well over 1.2 million people. Do you know who the first runner up is, with one house member per 800,000 People?

http://www.thirty-thousand.org

[JI7]

4. i wonder if the problem in india is religion

people give money to the temples and other frauds and hope their lives will becoming better that way while ignoring the corrupt politicians and businesses who steal money right in front of them.