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Dear Reader,

The current cover story on ‘Humanity, Hunger, Ostentation, and Wastage’ aims to ignite the service to humanity and stop wastages, especially of food. It encourages farming of fast growing nutritious food throughout the year like bananas and other plants. Paramahansa Sri Ramakrishna denied giving “Nirvikalpa Samadhi” (Blissful union with God) to his disciple Swami Vivekananda. He said “Service to humanity is worship of God. Do not be selfish. Serve humanity”. Later, Swami Vivekananda said that don’t neglect the living God. All are infinite manifestations of God. Worship the real, the knowledgeable, and the omnipresent. “Do not run after imaginary shadows that lead to fights and quarrels”. A rich person requested Jesus Christ to let him have the vision of God. Jesus told him, “Go, distribute all wealth among the poor and come.” He distributed all his wealth and came to be with Jesus. The Vedantic story of Hinduism narrates how demi-gods, goddesses and human beings were hollow and full of sorrow despite having the bounty of nature. They approached the Supreme God Vishnu who advised demi-gods and goddesses to have empathy, sympathy and kindness and for human beings to work hard with devotion and righteousness. Live with simplicity and austerity and donate wealth to the poor. Help them to help themselves and rise in life.

All enlightened human beings allay the sufferings of others while having blissful union with God; they serve the humanity. From decades, businesspersons have built schools, inns, and hospitals even in small villages having a population of 20,000 or so. Since ages, millionaires and billionaires have been contributing a part of their wealth to charity, for the welfare of the people.

The world has been marching towards materialism. Values are diminishing. People are getting afflicted with the 3 Ws (Wealth, Wine and Waywardness). This evil trend has been affecting humanity greatly.

God has given the bounty of food for every mouth. Yet, more than three billion people remain hungry and suffer from malnutrition. 60% women remain hungry globally. Around 30% of the food produced globally is wasted during periods of harvest and storage and due to logistical gaps. Straw, good for cattle, are burnt as the farmers do not have means to store and the logistics to sell them. In fact, according to the Indian Agriculture Ministry, `50,000 crore worth of produce is wasted every year in the country. Cattle feed worth `10,000 crore approximately might be wasted. India ranks 100th position among 119 countries on the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2017 prepared by the Washington-based International Policy Research Institute (IPRI). India has slipped three positions this year against the 97th rank in 2016. Despite the average GDP growth and large scale production of food, India’s GHI is 31.4 in 2017 - almost 10% higher than the world average of 21.8. The percentage of malnourished people has increased. Apart from wastages, addiction to alcohol and drugs is one of the major reasons for hungry stomachs and malnourishment, as low earnings of the poor are diverted to these dangerous indulgences. People including the servants of people (politicians) waste a lot of money and food for social functions, weddings, ceremonies and other activities.

God calls His divine children to remain ever active with honest hard work for the welfare of human beings and creation. Let no one be hungry and share wealth with the deserving and the needy, share food and the bounty of mother earth, help the poor, weak, hungry and old.

The government and Bharatwasis need to take following measures-

1.    Prevent wastage during the time of harvest. Between 2011-12 and 2016-17, 61824 tonnes and 8679 tonnes food grains were damaged in FCI godowns. Grains could have been distributed among the poor and needy.

2.    Balance production of grains and vegetables as per demand.

3.    Build silos (mechanised concrete silos), each at distance of 100 km, as it is existing at 100-200 km in the USA. Grains are stored in silos by the farmers. They can encash their crops as and when they need money and/or decide to sell stored grains. This has been enabling the USA to feed the world as bumper stocks shipped to needy countries.

4.    Food crop scenario of India has not been as per the nation’s mission and the vision of planners. Grains stored in gunny bags get infested, damaged and eaten by rats. Percentage of loss will be as high as 25%. Grains should be transported directly to the consuming centres.

5.    Storages and processing industry should be brought under the ambit of infrastructure and Public Private Partnership (PPP) model may be used for creating such infrastructure. Tax incentives need to be given. High levy of GST is making the packed and branded products very expensive- this is being resisted by consumers.

6.    Ban production and distribution of alcohol.

7.         Minimum wages should be based on the demand-supply of merchandise linked with productivity. Rampant higher minimum wages is restricting employment causing unemployment. Large number of population cannot afford to buy adequate quantity of food.

8.    Start “do not waste food” campaigns.

9.    Recycle waste for fertilizer and energy.

10.  Target for zero hunger and malnutrition and have holistic health development programmes.

11.  Plant nutritious and high yielding plants like Drumsticks, Bananas, Bamboo Shoots from Bamboo on road sides in forest, on waste lands, Coconut (which is less water-intensive plant), and other such plants can be planted.

12.  Stop supply of packed food for meal-day. Follow Akshaya Patra model of ISKCON.

Like sovereign India, India Inc. is still highly indebted. By an ordinance, the government has barred willful defaulters to participate as bidders in insolvency process. It is difficult to identify willful defaulters. All have to realise that entrepreneurs/promoters risk their life savings, inherited wealth from generations, their health and goodwill of the family to build organizations. Such, businesspersons do not intend to siphon off money. But, external affairs, global affairs, rapid increase in capacity, sudden fall in demand, high cost of interest and myriads of unforeseen factors can affect business. The promoter’s knowledge and experience can come handy in reviving businesses which are distressed. Barring them outright may not be an optimum solution. The US and the UK allow owners to bid. They have less challenges and less external affairs to affect the business. Yet, there are sick units. 

New IBC norms will deepen the losses of banks. Lawyers say that the process of bankruptcy could be disrupted, if promoters are kept out of bids. All defaults are not due to business failures. Cyril Shroff of Cyril Amarchand Mangal Das, the nationally renowned solicitor, is also of the same view. A promoter has a better idea of the business and experience of the value of assets and his bid becomes a benchmark. The non-promoter will look for distress valuation in absence of promoters being given a chance to bid. Armed with war chests filled with funds, global distressed funds are eyeing troubled assets in India.

Promoters in steel industry including big names are highly indebted. Few of them may be interested to add more units at rock bottom prices to have monopoly and cut competition from medium and small players.

Not allowing the promoters to bid will hurt the small and medium sized stressed enterprises the most. There will apparently be no bidders for these, and in absence of promoters, these would straight go for liquidation.

The World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business ranking is Number 100 for India now, an improvement of 30 places over last year’s rank of 130. But still there is a long way to go. As many as 100-200 approvals are required in India. More than 60% of projects are pending for complete clearance since years while having, bleeding overheads and incurring high costs of interest leading towards Stressed Assets. Is promoter at fault?

The global rating agency Standard & Poor’s refuses to join its peer Moody’s for raising the rating of India. S&P has kept the rating at BBB- since January 2007 and Fitch too at BBB- since August 2006, while Moody’s has raised its India rating from Baa3 to Baa2 to on November 17 2017. S&P has cited India’s sizeable fiscal deficit, low per capita income and high government debt levels as its reasons for not upgrading India. But S&P expects more institutional reforms and actions from top to bottom to enable the projects to progress.

With unity, discipline, hard work with devotion and righteousness, and not ‘Ism’, Socialism, religionism, capita-lism, and communism, but humanism, India will overcome hunger and malnutrition. Swami Vivekananda said, “India is a sleeping dragon. When she will rise, no power on earth can stop her progress and growth.” It may be around 2047 as declared by him in 1897 based on 150 years.