25 November, 2012

Why Can't India Feed Its People? - Businessweek

Why Can't India Feed Its People? - Businessweek: Ghanshyam, to me, embodies India’s poor and malnourished. He owns no land, except for the plot on which his hut stood. He has tuberculosis, which infects about 2 million Indians every year, but he still scrabbles for work in the fields of landowners, making between $2.50 and $3.50 a day. When strong enough, he hitches a ride to the city of Pratapgarh, 45 minutes away, in search of construction work paying as much as $3.75 a day. On other days, Ghanshyam waits for villagers to come find him for odd jobs. A neighbor once paid him $1.50 to build a small roof. Another time, he spent four or five hours helping to clear a field of weeds and stones. He made 80� that day.

In recent weeks, Ghanshyam found only a few days’ work. The monsoon was late, so there was little to be done in the fields; construction had slowed in anticipation of those same rains, the life force of rural India. With that meager income, Ghanshyam supported his wife, Urmila Devi, two teenage sons, and the wife of an older son whom I never saw.