Serious distortions of world food system are reflected in rather curious statistics that as many as a billion people suffer from hunger but almost double this number also suffer from obesity. However it should be clarified that obesity is not generally the result of overeating as much as this is the result of unhealthy foods churned out and promoted on[Read More…]
Madagascar is in great pain. Theodore Mbainaissem, the head of the World Food Programme (WFP) sub-office in Ambovombe, southern Madagascar, says: “Seeing the physical condition of people extremely affected by hunger who can no longer stand…children who are completely emaciated, the elderly who are skin and bone…these images are unbearable… People are eating white clay with tamarind juice, cactus leaves, wild[Read More…]
While the sufferings of several sections of population increased this year in India, perhaps it is the silent sufferings of children and students which increased the most. Whether it is nutrition or health or education or exposure to special risk situations and violence, from all points of view there appears to have been all-round deterioration in the condition of children.[Read More…]
When the government announced special Covid relief and stimulus package, perhaps the most welcomed feature was that of free food grain ( mainly cereals and a little pulse ) for the needy sections of society. Despite several limitations, this fulfilled an important need in a society experiencing widespread hunger in Covid times. When this provision was extended up to November[Read More…]
Have we won the fight against COVID? Wait, let us rephrase that. Do you think we have won the fight against COVID? One may assume that we have left the worst behind. After all, amid the Unlock v5, as with its predecessor, the country is finally opening up. One sees the streets bustling, traffic jams jostling and shops abuzz; while[Read More…]
Just like clockwork, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has set off another ‘heartfelt’ warning to the rest of the world, saying that, if conditions in the West African Sahel region continues to deteriorate, areas in four concerned countries could slip into famine, this was stated in the FAO’s Early Warning Analysis of Food Insecurity Hotspots and includes; Northeastern[Read More…]
Over two-thirds say nutritional quality has worsened and quantity has reduced (in September-October) compared to pre-lockdown The Right to Food Campaign is shocked with the worsening situation of hunger, although it is more than five months since the lockdown has ended. This emerged in the presentation of the Hunger watch study carried out by Right to Food Campaign and Center[Read More…]
Since the hungry billion in the world community believe that we can all eat if we set our common house in order, they believe also that it is unjust that some men die because it is too much trouble to arrange for them to live. Stringfellow Barr Citizens of the World (1954) World Food Day was set by[Read More…]
A report released by Oxfam in July 2020 states, “COVID-19 is deepening the hunger crisis in the world’s hunger hotspots and creating new epicentres of hunger across the globe. By the end of the year 12,000 people per day could die from hunger linked to COVID-19, potentially more than will die from the disease itself.” Like other regions in the world,[Read More…]
All around the world, the coronavirus and its restrictions are pushing already hungry communities over the edge, cutting off meager farms from markets and isolating villages from food and medical aid. Virus-linked hunger is leading to the deaths of 10,000 more children a month over the first year of the pandemic, according to an urgent call to action from the[Read More…]
Co-Written by Sandeep Pandey and Kushagra Kumar One of the writers of this article is reminded of an incident, when he was teaching at Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar which was then functioning from a campus in Chandkheda in Ahmedabad. On 16 December, 2011, a dog picked up a 2 months old boy child Akash who was lying on ground[Read More…]
Co-Written by Ruchi Sachan & Aditya Bordalai “Hunger is not an issue of charity. It is an issue of justice”- Jacques Diouf, Former Director General of FAO Goal 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) seeks to end hunger and all forms of malnutrition by the year 2030. “Every year, around 9 million people die of hunger; that’s more[Read More…]
The world’s progress in eliminating poverty is set to suffer a major setback due to the coronavirus pandemic, forcing more people to survive on less than $1.90 per day, the World Bank has said in a recent statement (Press release no.: 2020/193/EXC). “The pandemic and shutdown of advanced economies could push as many as 60 million people into extreme poverty[Read More…]
The death of a 5-year old girl in Hesatu village (Donki GP, Latehar district) on 16 May 2020 is widely attributed to hunger by local villagers. Nimani, about 5 years old, was the daughter of Jaglal Bhuiyan and Kalawati Devi. This Dalit family of ten (husband, wife and eight children aged from 4 months to 12-13 years) has no land[Read More…]
I don’t know if you came across a piece of news from Kolhapur, Maharashtra, published a few days back in several national dailies. No wonder you might have missed it, it was (purposely) snug in one tight corner of most papers like a hibernating animal, meant to be left untouched. Well, the news was that a twenty-seven-year-old, hungry man, Sunil[Read More…]
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When I founded Countercurrents.org in 2002, Disha Ravi who was arrested for sedition yesterday was a two-year-old toddler. In 2002, the CO2 level in the atmosphere was 370 ppm. Now it is 415 ppm. In just 19 years CO2 levels increased by just over 2ppm/year. The level of cumulative greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, including Methane, Nitrous Oxide etc is[Read More…]
