Starvation, inflation , power crises and us

Reading Indian newspapers last few days was like reading the script of new bond movie with news about bombs exploding everywhere and our policemen unearthing bombs one after another. The terrorists issuing more threats to famous personalities. It had all the masala of a classic hit film.
But another article caught my attention and made me think a lot. This was about the food crises in Haiti a Caribbean nation where the entire families are pushed towards hunger. (http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/30/stories/2008073055201100.htm).

(src : The Hindu)
Their staple diet was mud! I can’t express my feelings when I read about how the families baked the mud and gave it to their children. And even it is not free some less fortunate people have to buy even these cakes!!!

We complain about the food in our cafeteria, about AC not working, about the yearly appraisal. Our list is very big. What about these poor souls, any body complaining?

In the last one year the global food prices have shot up. We are facing a crisis which the world has seen in the late 1950’s. But then the green revolution in many countries saved millions. But the situation now is entirely different. We don’t have enough land to cultivate to feed the millions.

Would you help them if given a chance? But how?
I will give a simple mantra – turn green, eat less. Consume less energy, save the energy, eat vegetarian food. Why veg? To produce I kg of meat on an average 8 kg of cereals is used. See the equation. We can pay for 1 kg of meat but it will surely affect the supply of 8 kg of cereals somewhere in the world. How this will help? This is pure economics. The demand –supply fight. (Pardon me those who can’t grasp this idea, I will explain more about this in next article). The less you demand the pressure on the supply will decrease & this might bring down the prices for those poor souls.

By doing this you might not be able to give a meal to the mothers of Haiti tomorrow but surely to few others in our own country. Many of you wont know that there are many communities in India (an even in the place where I live in the most educated state of India Kerala) many people live on mud cakes!!!