7 ms·

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

234 points by codelion 14y ago

pessimist 14y ago
Incidentally, the problematic public distribution system is solved in parts of India, most notably the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu - http://www.thehindu.com/arts/magazine/article2475948.ece http://www.thehindu.com/arts/magazine/article2475948.ece. The estimated loss in Tamil Nadu is 4%, as opposed to over 90% in some states. Tamil Nadu politicians are not any less corrupt than other states. However the PDS has some notable features: 1. It is universal - not restricted to only people below the "poverty line". Thus many people are incentivized to have it work. 2. The PDS "ration" shops are run cooperatively by localities and villages, not private dealers. 3. Simple schemes make it transparent like an SMS that will reply telling you the current stock of a given shop, when new stocks will arrive and so on so that the shop keeper cannot simply cheat you out of your ration.
- kamaal 14y ago
  My point is why give free food at all? If we help boost agriculture productivity and work on our economy most people will be able to buy food. We must avoid giving Freebies. Giving away things for free/subsidy is the root cause of the problem.
  - noobplusplus 14y ago
    where were you till date. World has missed you, so how can you take your opinions further into actions? Or was this a thought bubble which came and went away?
  - EliRivers 14y ago
    How is that possibly the root cause of the problem? Right now, there IS enough food to feed these people; it's being stolen before they get it. "My point is why give free food at all?" Because these people are starving? Is that not a good reason?
    - kamaal 14y ago
      Free stuff is considered as doing a favor. Besides India is such a big country that monitoring these things is nearly impossible. With corruption rampant and lack of accountability, these schemes are designed to fail from their very inception. What these people need is not food, may be they need it at the moment. But what these people need is a way to make a decent living, which nobody shows them how to- And often we come back and talk about hunger.
      - EliRivers 14y ago
        "Besides India is such a big country that monitoring these things is nearly impossible." I disagree very strongly. Monitoring food distribution scales really well. You add monitors. That's it. If you want concrete examples of effectively monitoring things over large areas I can provide some. If the monitors themselves are corrupt then the problem is not that somehow monitoring big things is impossible. The problem is corruption. Edit: For sillysaurus, because he asked. Walmart effectively monitors food distribution over the US. Power companies effectively monitor the power grids over large areas. Electoral commissions (in some countries) effectively monitor elections over large areas.
        sillysaurus 14y ago
        What are some concrete examples of effectively monitoring things over large areas?
        stickfigure 14y ago
        I am not convinced that this makes a useful point. "The problem is corruption" - sure. But adding monitors doesn't seem to address that issue; actually, adding bureaucrats and regulators (which India has in abundance) seems to exacerbate the problem by establishing petty fiefdoms. How many bribes do you have to pay to open a business? Short of a massive cultural shift (the kind that only happens when millions of people get murdered), Indian society is what it is. Think of this as a game theory problem - you can't change the players, you can only change the rules of the game, and even that with only limited authority. What approach will accomplish the desired goals? As an outsider, I get the feeling that an awful lot of Indian public policy starts with the assumption that humans are dutiful and honest. That seems like a problem.
  - smcl 14y ago
    You've read through the entire article which indicates huge levels of corruption, and your conclusion is simply "Giving away things for free/subsidy is the root cause of the problem"?
    - kamaal 14y ago
      Because I know corruption is one of the many many issues that resulted in this problem and not the only thing responsible for it. If you were to fix corruption, may be they will be fed this season, but they will hungry in next 6 months. Corruption is happening inside this free food distribution program. But why do those people even need free food? Unfortunately this question is never asked. Those people don't have productive jobs to afford it. That is why we always keep hearing of these stories. Our focus must be to provide them jobs so that they can buy it, instead of making it a free stuff.
      - studentrob 14y ago
        of course, jobs are needed. #1 is food tho- if you are starving then you are unhealthy and not able to take care of yourself . some people are born into poverty and need more of a leg up in the beginning because if they make any mistakes they die. if we make mistakes, we have many legs to stand on, because we are very very privileged. have you ever given to charity or given anything away for free? or have you ever been given something for free?
      - lilsunnybee 14y ago
        If income is distributed too unequally, it is extremely common that there just aren't enough jobs to go around at any given time. A wealthy person only needs so many servants. Everyone else has needs too, but if they don't have money to throw around they can't stimulate the economy. The immediate problem here is corruption and a non-functioning law enforcement and court system. The pervasive root problem is actually that a fair amount of Indians don't have the disposable income to create enough jobs for everyone, or to provide for the sick, elderly, or disabled in their communities. And letting people die or suffer from malnutrition, whether they're productive or not, is just sick.
    - 14y ago
  - pessimist 14y ago
    Perhaps, but I should note that India has historically suffered from highly inconsistent monsoons which have lead to famines, as recently as the 1960s. The failure of those monsoons lead to the creation of a PDS system.
  - Mvandenbergh 14y ago
    That sounds great in theory, but it will take decades to make significant improvements in agricultural productivity (mostly for political reasons) and preventing mass starvation in the mean time is also important.
    - kamaal 14y ago
      I agree with you on this. But the point is this hunger stories reappear after the aid exhausts out. Which means people are not put to work to afford it.
    - maheshs 14y ago
      There are always two way to solve the problem. In this case politician can solve this problem by implementation and execution of plan for increasing the productivity and increasing the jobs. Second plan is to feed them with free food. Second one is easy and give them quick votes, though its dangerous for poor people as well as country.
      - intended 14y ago
        Again, the food isn't free. It's drastically subsidized. The PDS system creates a floor price for agricultural produce, ensuring against the vagaries of the market. At th same time it distorts market prices. Given the inefficiency in the system, and it's lack of gearage which can transmit efficiency benefits to the bottom of the pyramid, the PDS system is an interim measure to help pull the bottom out of poverty.
  - pessimist 14y ago
    I presume you live or have lived in India? In that case, consider yourself that the people targeted for this earn less than Rs. 25 per day - that is the official poverty line in India. Please consider yourself what you would be able to afford to buy and eat and that price. For yourself and 2 children. If you live in India please attempt to go to a store and buy food for the same price and see what you get. Thanks!
    - kamaal 14y ago
      Hmmm, I actually come from a pretty poor financial background. What helped me rise is self esteem to never accept help and learn to be strong instead. In fact right from the beginning I've refused scholarships. I purposefully turned down the option of reservation for my engineering course though I was perfectly eligible for it. My dad always says if you let people be strong they will be strong. Let them be weak and they will be weak. What these people need is not free stuff and reservations. They just need to be shown how to be strong and work their way out of the problem.
      - vacri 14y ago
        Who will be showing them?
      - hashpipe 14y ago
        It's strange that you refused a scholarship - who knows where that money went (another needy student or another scam). Plus, turning down a reservation only means that you made sure that someone less deserving (via reservation) got an engineering seat over a more deserving one (a general student who otherwise would have ranked just enough to get admitted). While your intent is good, I think you are letting your ego do the talking - dishing out theories over practicals. Practicality beats the st out of theory any given day. Try telling the farmer who hasn't eaten for a week to stand up and be strong - I bet he can't stand (quite literally).
        ams6110 14y ago
        Any time someone gives you something you then have to dance to their tune. Do it on your own and you call the shots.
  - intended 14y ago
    This is a question that requires more than a HN post to answer. In broad outlines though 1) On the one hand this is our social safety net, and the floor to ensure that farmers are guaranteed a floor price for their efforts 2) We HAVE boosted agricultural productivity, which is why we have stocks which are now rotting. 3) We are stuck (edit: Didn't finish this point) with the legacies of our past. Which include our own step backwards in the 1960s. 4) > We must avoid giving Freebies. Giving away things for free/subsidy is the root cause of the problem. The food isn't free. Its at a nominal subsidized rate. The poverty line is about 32 rs a day. This system acts as a social safety net, while also at the same time ensuring a floor price for agricultural produce. NREGA, a right to work act; may well be digging holes to fill holes. Yet it also is working to support a minimum wage across the country. Can they be scrapped? Yeah. Will it be good for India? No, it will likely be a disaster. The transition from an inefficient, old school system to a modern system will immediately close out entire generations from the economy. No amount of education and retraining will close that gap. Expect a gradual transition, as alternatives to western systems are dreamt up which work in an Indian context. Some of them are redundant, but are what people will swallow and accept. ----------------- Other fun stuff: Heck forget freebies, you should check out the reverse taxation mechanism that recently got introduced and is applicable from mid year. The larger firms now are responsible for collecting the taxes they pay for obtaining services! If you work for a large firm and rent a car, if the final bill contains service tax, you are now obligated to pay that service tax to the government separately. Why? Because the govt knows it can't go after the unorganized sector directly. So they make it inimical for the un-organized sector to remain disorganized. MNCs will transfer their work to companies like Hertz, or other rent-a-car companies and so on. Smaller firms will have to register and become compliant to survive. Widening the tax net, and increase compliance. At the expense of the more established firms. Bizarre? Yeah, its par for the course. ----------------------- Side note: 2 MBA students actually tried to live at 100 Rs/day and then Rs 32 a day. At the 32 mark, they said travel was out of the question because the calorific/time effort required to move that distance to get to a bus station would have curtailed other equally important activities. (http://rs100aday.com/about/ http://rs100aday.com/about/)
    - kamaal 14y ago
      I agree with you in principle. But the point in discussion is why do people need to be provided food for free? Clearly if they are not able to buy for a real long time- This indicates they are not earning enough. So fixing that makes more sense than fixing problems in the free food program. Because if we fix the affordability issue we will not need the free food program at the first place. Yes the distribution system is broken. I think a step to fix that was tried- FDI in retail was good. Companies could buy directly from the farmers, eliminating middle men and the entire inefficient distribution cycle. But I and you know well the political opposition to those reforms.
  - if_else 14y ago
    because giving freebies makes people feel good. There are two parts of problems: one is to make people satisfied that they are helping others; another is to help others.
  - king_jester 14y ago
    I don't understand this mentality. Even the most developed countries have problems with people going hungry for a variety of reasons. Why shouldn't food be free? Why is it that you must pay to eat? Reducing basic human requirements to dependency on economies and money will always leave some people out. To say that food should not be free is to say that you value wealth and economy over people's lives. In fact, as technology makes it easier to produce more food, we should be using that abundance to provide food to anyone that wants it.
  - deepGem 14y ago
    We cannot boost agricultural productivity with the current mono/dual crop culture, in a country like India. That's because there's very little 'new' land available for agriculture. So you have to boost the yield in the existing land and even that doesn't scale really well. To solve the food problem, we should start eating animals that reproduce really fast, pigs and rodents :), no matter how disgusting it is, to even think about.
  - lolcraft 14y ago
    I can guess from where this sort of, seeing the market as a moralistic play, comes from. Macroeconomics can, via some stretching of the perfect-markets hypothesis, be transformed into this almost-Calvinist cosmology, where the virtuous labourers will be blessed with an eventual retirement, and the sinful free-loaders will be punished with the sin of contentment. I guess you worked hard all your life, too. It's the classic "I think I made it without help so fuck everyone else", plus some missionary fervour, Saint Theresa style: "don't give them free stuff! They must earn it or else they won't see the light!". First, nobody can pull ten million jobs from their ass. Like, what the fuck do you propose they work on? Should we hire ten or twenty Indians to make us sandwiches that we won't eat? To farm more food that nobody will eat? There's simply not enough demand for labour today. If those people that were starving today were instead fairly rich, and could buy something, yeah, sure, there would be more demand for that labour that could create that something. Second, we are talking about, like, giving them food. It's not like the developed world sat and decided to give each beggar a Mercedes. Apparently you think barely feeding them for a while will turn them into lazy asses without no ambitions such as, I don't know, an apartment, a car, a 40" TV screen and two or three kids. Maybe so. I don't see how it follows.
    - genwin 14y ago
      I think there's plenty of evidence that free food does more harm than good in the long run, outside of emergency situations that couldn't reasonably be planned for. In the long run millions of beggars wouldn't have been born in the first place if free food hadn't been available. (That's not to say that beggars are always caused by free food.) Humans aren't much different than ducks in this regard.
      - anu_gupta 14y ago
        > In the long run millions of beggars wouldn't have been born in the first place if free food hadn't been available. You're right, of course, because their parents would have starved to death. A civilised society does not allow its citizens to die of starvation. In the long run of course it would be preferable to not have to give out free food, but until there's a viable alternative, that's what a civilised country does.
  - Retric 14y ago
    World GDP is ~70 trillion. Cost of feeding everyone in the world a healthy diet for 1 year = ~2.5 trillion. Or 3.5% of world GDP to feed everyone on the planet, hmm that may or may not be worth it but food is hardly the backbone of the world economy.
  - droob 14y ago
    "LIVIN' THE GOOD LIFE, CHUMPS, sittin' here on this dirt floor at subsistence level. GOT IT MADE."
  - brown9-2 14y ago
    Because it takes years if not decades to improve agriculture and the economy, and people are starving today.
  - bicknergseng 14y ago
    Seems to me like it works if implemented correctly, and that corruption and poor implementation are the root causes. The notion that providing essential services and goods like education, healthcare, and food somehow weakens a society or an economy needs to be squashed so that our global society can focus on how to accomplish those basic tasks.
    - crusso 14y ago
      notion that providing essential services and goods like education, healthcare, and food I can see the benefit of free education. When you educate people, it has a multiplicative effect on the mobility of the individuals. Education has the ability to unlock a great deal of potential in each person which has a seemingly obvious benefit for the rest of the society. I would argue that giving completely free food and healthcare do weaken most societies. The problem is that there's an all-too-large portion of most societies that will avoid working if they can get basic necessities like food, healthcare, and housing met for free. Working is good for people. It gets them out of bed, gets them thinking, gives some people their only exercise, forces people to deal with others socially, and quite literally keeps some folks out of trouble that they'd otherwise get into if they were completely idle. I'm all for a safety net to keep people suffering from catastrophic health problems or temporary situations from dying/starving... but the notion that we should make "free food" a policy is just broken.
  - mikeash 14y ago
    > If we help boost agriculture productivity and work on our economy most people will be able to buy food. "Most people" simply isn't good enough. Free markets generally work great for items that are not necessities. Efficiency, variety, and innovation is incentivized. But you always end up with some people who can't afford the items. If they're not a necessity, that's perfectly fine. But food is a necessity, and always having some people who can't afford food is not acceptable.
    - anamax 14y ago
      When's the last time a free market had a famine? How often do "not free" markets have famines? In the US, poor people are fat. They don't lack food. (They don't lack TVs, cars, or houses either.)
      - yarrel 14y ago
        How are the crops doing in the US this summer, btw?
        anamax 14y ago
        > How are the crops doing in the US this summer, btw? Not particularly well. We'll have to reduce our exports and draw down some of our reserves. In other words, our poor people can continue to be fat, not starving. They might buy fewer TVs for a while or reduce the amount of processed calories to handle the extra cost. We can have several years of bad crops before we'll have a food shortage. Of course, it would help if we stopped using food for automobile fuel. (The brazilians would love to sell us methanol for less but they don't have an early presidential primary.)
      - mikeash 14y ago
        Famine isn't the issue. A famine is when there simply isn't enough food within a population. The issue at hand is when there's enough food that isn't well distributed, which is a completely different phenomenon.
        14y ago
  - rayiner 14y ago
    > If we help boost agriculture productivity and work on our economy most people will be able to buy food. [Citation needed]
  - nayanga 14y ago
    When somebody is ill or weak why do give him/her medicine let body recover by itself, may not work most of the time and it will become severe. The whole idea of helping somebody is to recover from that state.
  - rmk 14y ago
    Are you aware that people are dying for lack of food in India? Food is a basic need. Denying food to starving people and letting it rot does not help boost agricultural productivity or help people 'work on our economy'.
kamaal 14y ago
My boss once told me fix the cause, not the effect. Free food subsidies are really doomed for failure. This is in part a lack of long term solutions to these problems. Around 12-15 years back in India everybody had something called 'Ration card'. Its there today too, but back then you were eligible for rations at subsidized prices, I remember standing in long queues outside ration shops for wheat, rice, oil, sugar and kerosene. Needless to say these schemes were a legacy of the communist set up that India had for a long time. Realizing that this is not likely to scale. The government now issued new cards called 'BPL cards'(BPL- Below poverty line). That means this wasn't even for the poor, this was for the poorest among the poor. This is failing too. There are also other food schemes, in my state Karnataka, kids in government schools get mid day meals called 'Akshaya Patra'. Which is largely bad food served. Often contracted to some guy who pays the highest bribe. The food is generally unhygienic and lacks nutrition. I think by now everybody must know these free food schemes are a big failure. The problem is India has huge inefficiencies in agriculture. The farming framework is massively unproductive. There are many reasons for this. Firstly the methods themselves belong to old stone age. Many farmers in villages farm with cows and bulls. Fertilizers/insecticides/pesticides are abused to the core to boost production. Irrigation isn't figured out yet. There are some major dams, but irrigation infrastructure is just totally absent. Droughts and floods are common. We either don't have water when we need it or there is simply too much water and we don't what to do about it. Farming land is subject to division through inheritance. Apart from this the distribution is broken. Tons of grain rots because its not shipped and transported. Middle men act as a parasites in entire food-supply chain and add no value driving the end consumer prices high. There are various experiments carried out especially forming communities in villages to encourage building local reservoirs and other efficient farming methods. But this will take a long time. The political parties are dead opposed to FDI's in retail and farming. There by technology inflow from outside is limited. All this for vote bank politics. Basically India is reeling under effects of its communist past and is held back because of inefficiencies of its political system combined sum total ignorance among the farmers. So its not just corruption there are train of issues that result in these sort of problems.
kshatrea 14y ago
In India, there are several levels of bureaucracy that are involved. The main layer is called the Public Distribution System (PDS), whereby people are issued ration cards and allowed to purchase a certain amount of food at subsidized prices, or in poor families, given it for free. There is a colossal amount of corruption and theft; people simply report grains as sold and sell it on the black market. Due to the immense number of small traders and grocers who take cash and sell stuff without receipts, there are no taxes paid on this, and so everyone involved makes a profit, except for those whom this is supposed to benefit. Also, the sole source of storage are government granaries & silos, where a lot of food has either been found to have rotted, or been stolen. While people on HN are busy reading all the time about various Indian inefficiencies, corruptions and crimes, let us not forget that India's history is a socialist one (and like all socialist economies, the inefficiencies are built into the system - look at Venezuela/Cuba/Argentina/Hungary etc. today), and it is only in the last 20 years that there has been some liberalization and the Indian entrepreneur's spirit has been allowed to flourish. As you can see from all these headlines, there is still a long way to go for free market reforms. There are several sectors like the agricultural sector, energy sector and construction sector, where reforms would help a lot.
zizee 14y ago
Corruption, above all else, is the biggest thing holding humanity back, but I wonder if it is possible to cleanse corruption from a society where it is so deeply ingrained? Are there any good examples of a really corrupt society successfully making the transition to an relatively uncorrupted state?
- eckyptang 14y ago
  It would be nice but it's part of human nature. It's simply a form of survival. You'd need an external non human entity to prevent it, which inevitably leads to bad science fiction stories being recalled...
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- nik61 14y ago
  USA - a lot better than it once was, I've heard. So is the UK compared to the 18th Century. Much remains to be done in both cases... Anybody got an effective analysis of how the changes for the better happened (if they really did)?
- yk 14y ago
  I would argue that the transition from feudal societies to modern nations is a example for such an transition. On a much shorter timescale, there seems to be quite some variability in corruption[1]. And connecting the plot lines, there seems no show stopper at any value of this corruption metric, so there seems to be no problem in principle to move from a very corrupt society to a uncorrupt one on a timescale of 20 years. Playing a bit further with the data, the correlation between corruption and GDP is rather impressive [2]. [1] Google public data explorer link: http://bit.ly/PQ12bj http://bit.ly/PQ12bj [2] Again Google: http://bit.ly/Ttp24m http://bit.ly/Ttp24m
  - zizee 14y ago
    Agreed, I was thinking that as well. I wonder if the same factors in transforming those societies all those years ago could be used in the modern world? Or has the world changed so much since then that the same factors could no longer apply? Things like much larger populations, greater mobility and communications may make the solution to corruption a lot different today than what worked in the past.
noobplusplus 14y ago
How are hackers supposed to hack it off? I don't understand why such news travels to the top of HN. In case no one has a soln. for it, why write big posts? IF you gotta do something go and do it, i am pretty sure, the ones who are most concerned won't be hanging around here. This seems to me OT.
- kamaal 14y ago
  HN is a place people across the world meet. Its a place to learn and know interesting perspectives. Just as there have been discussion on inefficiencies of agriculture in the US, fights in McDonalds over glasses and other US political stuff things like this get discussed. It gives a perspective to people on poverty in the world and how things are else where beyond your cubicle and first world countries.
  - noobplusplus 14y ago
    OMG! i didn't know that. Thanks for enlightening me. But i along with other fellow geeks would want to see more tech stuff than why people have got used to corruption and talks about protests etc.
    - louhike 14y ago
      Most articles on HN are about technical subjects so I don't see why you complain about some discussions which are on others topics. If there are news on India corruption on HN, it's because there is a lot of hackers interested in it. If you're not, just ignore these articles.
  - biot 14y ago
    According to PG's guidelines, the criteria roughly boils down to whether or not something gratifies your intellectual curiosity. Shall we flood HN with stories of corruption in the Congo, Thailand, Haiti, Russia, Egypt, and so on? Maybe HN should have a weekly feature of poverty-stricken AIDS victims in various countries in Africa? Perhaps title this weekly feature "Poverty Perspectives Beyond the Cubicle"? Stories like these, while tragic, are not new phenomena. Unless one is naive, one should already know that the world is full of corruption and that there isn't anything particularly novel about this brand of corruption. On the other hand, a story about cleverly planted subtle bugs in a high-frequency trading algorithm would make for a great HN story involving corruption since the details would be intellectually gratifying. But plain old selling of supplies meant for the poor? That's been going on forever. How is your intellect gratified by hearing about yet one more case?
lionhearted 14y ago
Serious question -- Stories like this come out of India fairly often. How come the government hasn't been overthrown yet? Or severe riots, insurrections, etc? Seems like that would happen elsewhere, no?
- kamaal 14y ago
  It happens in India too. There are massive anti-corruption movements in progress. There are also riots, everything exists as else where. Its just that people by now are so used to all these problems so many of them sort of just go by it.
  - noobplusplus 14y ago
    Unlike elsewhere protests are peaceful. People sit for fast, and that allows the govt. to easily pass away. The whole political system is full of such people!
- aniket_ray 14y ago
  I'd say apathy of the masses is the biggest reason that any of the things you mention haven't happened. In this article, for instance, only the poorest of the poor are truly starving and the vast majority just doesn't care enough to protest. While the middle classes are too busy with their own lives, the poorest and most disadvantaged people are too busy trying to eke out a basic living to actually protest about it. Let me try to list some reasons as to why. India has no real opposition party in the centre or most of the states. Most ruling parties end up having uncontrolled power. Corruption has become so pervasive in the Indian pillars of governance that we don't really have a Law & Order System anymore. The Police are corrupt and the judicial system is corrupt. Criminals thrive, as long as they have money. Failure of the Law & Order system encourages corruption in the political class. The times that an opposition party does become a bit powerful, they end up being just as corrupt as the ruling party. Most Indian election candidates use the support of various mafia and unscrupulous businessmen to win elections. Once they win this way, they need to help such people now that they are in power. Over a period of time, these issues have become so pervasive in the Indian system that today the educated and the middle classes stay away from politics. They live in their own laissez-faire life with private utilities, security and medicine. They pay their taxes but don't expect much from the government in return as long as the government doesn't interfere or hinder them. The powerful media is too busy and is rarely anti-government because government advertising forms a big part of their revenues. So they don't carry such stories for long. The media has their own pressures since they have to keep circulations high by keeping the prices virtually free. A section of the civil society had been trying to hold anti-corruption protests in recent times. They started with a lot of support but soon the media lost interest in them and nobody really pays any attention to their rallies anymore. Now for all these reasons, the middle classes are mostly apathetic to the plight of the poor or the fact that the rich are exploiting the nation.
eplanit 14y ago
No disrespect to the people described in the article, but how is this relevant on HN?
- nik61 14y ago
  Yet again (from HN guidelines): "What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." This is one of the main things that makes HN such a potent forum throughout the world.
anovikov 14y ago
No 'public distribution system' can ever fix any of problems society faces. It just makes government bigger, in the end making things worse. Maybe it's okay in big cities where you give free food to avoid people killing for it, i.e. suppressing crime, but works only in conjunction with strong law enforcement. Nobody is going to become a better/more productive person because (s)he received free food for years.
- lilsunnybee 14y ago
  Everyone has received free food for years: it's called childhood. Saying that just because someone has their most basic needs provided for they won't strive for a better life is preposterous.
simula67 14y ago
First of let me say that I am from India. I have been watching the number of (negative) political posts regarding India on HN for quite some time now[1] What are the benefits and costs of discussing these issues here on HN? Some benefits: 1. It gives rise to a discussion which hopefully translates to solutions and actions for future 2. It is a nice break from discussing technology ( ?? ) Some costs: 1. HN being an international forum, it gives an idea that India is choke full of problems that nothing good will come out of India [2]. No wonder latest discussion on India's Mars vision was derided along the lines of "Get food to your people first" 2. It is not of interest to a large number of hackers 3. It is a fertile ground for armchair theorizing. I am of the opinion these stories should be flagged. [1]http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=india&start=0 http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=ind... [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias
- praj_na 14y ago
  I concur with [3]. This was also a front page article on reddit which is probably a better suited place for such discussions
- genwin 14y ago
  Such stories shouldn't be flagged according to the submission guidelines.
auser678 14y ago
This makes me so angry and sad. I see such corruption happening everyday. Uttar Pradesh is a state of 200 million people and one of the most backward and corrupt states.It is another fact that Uttar Pradesh due to the sheer number produces some of the best talent in India and the world. Most of these people migrate out of Lucknow and UP. I wish more of them would come back and try to build companies so that more jobs are created. We just watch from far and lament but do nothing about it. We have made a small start by being based here, and hope we can make an impact.
huntesh 14y ago
thanks to the contention arising due to equitable distribution of food among the states, the grains rots in the godowns again. another major disadvantage of democracy.
ycycyc 14y ago
Does anyone keep in perspective that the biggest achievement of independent India is avoiding famines thanks partly to the help of the "rotten" PDS? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famines_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famines_in_India I think this article follows a pattern of op-eds in India: the private sector eyes a plump public-sector undertaking. Suddenly there is a series of articles often pointing at the weakest link in the chain - Uttar Pradesh or Bihar is always there to be poster boys of decay, the articles never focus on functional systems in the south, like Kerala or TamilNadu - and then libertarians chime in on how any kind of sharing/caring/government is bad. Lo and behold, due to the weight of public opinion, the sector is sold off - classic crony capitalism.
patio11 14y ago
If you can buy a Pepsi in every village in India, why can’t the government get us our rations? This is a quote for the ages.
- kamaal 14y ago
  This actually speaks volumes of the true nature of the problem. The problem is distribution and affordability. You can buy Pepsi for ten rupees, and the fact that its everywhere talks a lot of Pepsi's distribution model.
ramsetal 14y ago
this is the real story that really depress me!
j45 14y ago
I have read that there is no rule of law in India, meaning corruption from top to bottom so deep that the average person is living a more and more miserable life.
- j45 14y ago
  Appreciate the downmod, would appreciate a reason/discussion about the above even more
npguy 14y ago
I am surprised why nobody has questioned the harsh language in the title. Read it again - Poor starve as politicians Steal - "Steal"?
yarrel 14y ago
The market wants people to die. All we can do is help it decide how many. Apparently.

234 points by codelion 14y ago

Incidentally, the problematic public distribution system is solved in parts of India, most notably the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu - http://www.thehindu.com/arts/magazine/article2475948.ece http://www.thehindu.com/arts/magazine/article2475948.ece. The estimated loss in Tamil Nadu is 4%, as opposed to over 90% in some states. Tamil Nadu politicians are not any less corrupt than other states. However the PDS has some notable features: 1. It is universal - not restricted to only people below the "poverty line". Thus many people are incentivized to have it work. 2. The PDS "ration" shops are run cooperatively by localities and villages, not private dealers. 3. Simple schemes make it transparent like an SMS that will reply telling you the current stock of a given shop, when new stocks will arrive and so on so that the shop keeper cannot simply cheat you out of your ration.

kamaal 14y ago
My point is why give free food at all? If we help boost agriculture productivity and work on our economy most people will be able to buy food. We must avoid giving Freebies. Giving away things for free/subsidy is the root cause of the problem.
- noobplusplus 14y ago
  where were you till date. World has missed you, so how can you take your opinions further into actions? Or was this a thought bubble which came and went away?
- EliRivers 14y ago
  How is that possibly the root cause of the problem? Right now, there IS enough food to feed these people; it's being stolen before they get it. "My point is why give free food at all?" Because these people are starving? Is that not a good reason?
  - kamaal 14y ago
    Free stuff is considered as doing a favor. Besides India is such a big country that monitoring these things is nearly impossible. With corruption rampant and lack of accountability, these schemes are designed to fail from their very inception. What these people need is not food, may be they need it at the moment. But what these people need is a way to make a decent living, which nobody shows them how to- And often we come back and talk about hunger.
    - EliRivers 14y ago
      "Besides India is such a big country that monitoring these things is nearly impossible." I disagree very strongly. Monitoring food distribution scales really well. You add monitors. That's it. If you want concrete examples of effectively monitoring things over large areas I can provide some. If the monitors themselves are corrupt then the problem is not that somehow monitoring big things is impossible. The problem is corruption. Edit: For sillysaurus, because he asked. Walmart effectively monitors food distribution over the US. Power companies effectively monitor the power grids over large areas. Electoral commissions (in some countries) effectively monitor elections over large areas.
      - sillysaurus 14y ago
        What are some concrete examples of effectively monitoring things over large areas?
      - stickfigure 14y ago
        I am not convinced that this makes a useful point. "The problem is corruption" - sure. But adding monitors doesn't seem to address that issue; actually, adding bureaucrats and regulators (which India has in abundance) seems to exacerbate the problem by establishing petty fiefdoms. How many bribes do you have to pay to open a business? Short of a massive cultural shift (the kind that only happens when millions of people get murdered), Indian society is what it is. Think of this as a game theory problem - you can't change the players, you can only change the rules of the game, and even that with only limited authority. What approach will accomplish the desired goals? As an outsider, I get the feeling that an awful lot of Indian public policy starts with the assumption that humans are dutiful and honest. That seems like a problem.
- smcl 14y ago
  You've read through the entire article which indicates huge levels of corruption, and your conclusion is simply "Giving away things for free/subsidy is the root cause of the problem"?
  - kamaal 14y ago
    Because I know corruption is one of the many many issues that resulted in this problem and not the only thing responsible for it. If you were to fix corruption, may be they will be fed this season, but they will hungry in next 6 months. Corruption is happening inside this free food distribution program. But why do those people even need free food? Unfortunately this question is never asked. Those people don't have productive jobs to afford it. That is why we always keep hearing of these stories. Our focus must be to provide them jobs so that they can buy it, instead of making it a free stuff.
    - studentrob 14y ago
      of course, jobs are needed. #1 is food tho- if you are starving then you are unhealthy and not able to take care of yourself . some people are born into poverty and need more of a leg up in the beginning because if they make any mistakes they die. if we make mistakes, we have many legs to stand on, because we are very very privileged. have you ever given to charity or given anything away for free? or have you ever been given something for free?
    - lilsunnybee 14y ago
      If income is distributed too unequally, it is extremely common that there just aren't enough jobs to go around at any given time. A wealthy person only needs so many servants. Everyone else has needs too, but if they don't have money to throw around they can't stimulate the economy. The immediate problem here is corruption and a non-functioning law enforcement and court system. The pervasive root problem is actually that a fair amount of Indians don't have the disposable income to create enough jobs for everyone, or to provide for the sick, elderly, or disabled in their communities. And letting people die or suffer from malnutrition, whether they're productive or not, is just sick.
  - 14y ago
- pessimist 14y ago
  Perhaps, but I should note that India has historically suffered from highly inconsistent monsoons which have lead to famines, as recently as the 1960s. The failure of those monsoons lead to the creation of a PDS system.
- Mvandenbergh 14y ago
  That sounds great in theory, but it will take decades to make significant improvements in agricultural productivity (mostly for political reasons) and preventing mass starvation in the mean time is also important.
  - kamaal 14y ago
    I agree with you on this. But the point is this hunger stories reappear after the aid exhausts out. Which means people are not put to work to afford it.
  - maheshs 14y ago
    There are always two way to solve the problem. In this case politician can solve this problem by implementation and execution of plan for increasing the productivity and increasing the jobs. Second plan is to feed them with free food. Second one is easy and give them quick votes, though its dangerous for poor people as well as country.
    - intended 14y ago
      Again, the food isn't free. It's drastically subsidized. The PDS system creates a floor price for agricultural produce, ensuring against the vagaries of the market. At th same time it distorts market prices. Given the inefficiency in the system, and it's lack of gearage which can transmit efficiency benefits to the bottom of the pyramid, the PDS system is an interim measure to help pull the bottom out of poverty.
- pessimist 14y ago
  I presume you live or have lived in India? In that case, consider yourself that the people targeted for this earn less than Rs. 25 per day - that is the official poverty line in India. Please consider yourself what you would be able to afford to buy and eat and that price. For yourself and 2 children. If you live in India please attempt to go to a store and buy food for the same price and see what you get. Thanks!
  - kamaal 14y ago
    Hmmm, I actually come from a pretty poor financial background. What helped me rise is self esteem to never accept help and learn to be strong instead. In fact right from the beginning I've refused scholarships. I purposefully turned down the option of reservation for my engineering course though I was perfectly eligible for it. My dad always says if you let people be strong they will be strong. Let them be weak and they will be weak. What these people need is not free stuff and reservations. They just need to be shown how to be strong and work their way out of the problem.
    - vacri 14y ago
      Who will be showing them?
    - hashpipe 14y ago
      It's strange that you refused a scholarship - who knows where that money went (another needy student or another scam). Plus, turning down a reservation only means that you made sure that someone less deserving (via reservation) got an engineering seat over a more deserving one (a general student who otherwise would have ranked just enough to get admitted). While your intent is good, I think you are letting your ego do the talking - dishing out theories over practicals. Practicality beats the st out of theory any given day. Try telling the farmer who hasn't eaten for a week to stand up and be strong - I bet he can't stand (quite literally).
      - ams6110 14y ago
        Any time someone gives you something you then have to dance to their tune. Do it on your own and you call the shots.
- intended 14y ago
  This is a question that requires more than a HN post to answer. In broad outlines though 1) On the one hand this is our social safety net, and the floor to ensure that farmers are guaranteed a floor price for their efforts 2) We HAVE boosted agricultural productivity, which is why we have stocks which are now rotting. 3) We are stuck (edit: Didn't finish this point) with the legacies of our past. Which include our own step backwards in the 1960s. 4) > We must avoid giving Freebies. Giving away things for free/subsidy is the root cause of the problem. The food isn't free. Its at a nominal subsidized rate. The poverty line is about 32 rs a day. This system acts as a social safety net, while also at the same time ensuring a floor price for agricultural produce. NREGA, a right to work act; may well be digging holes to fill holes. Yet it also is working to support a minimum wage across the country. Can they be scrapped? Yeah. Will it be good for India? No, it will likely be a disaster. The transition from an inefficient, old school system to a modern system will immediately close out entire generations from the economy. No amount of education and retraining will close that gap. Expect a gradual transition, as alternatives to western systems are dreamt up which work in an Indian context. Some of them are redundant, but are what people will swallow and accept. ----------------- Other fun stuff: Heck forget freebies, you should check out the reverse taxation mechanism that recently got introduced and is applicable from mid year. The larger firms now are responsible for collecting the taxes they pay for obtaining services! If you work for a large firm and rent a car, if the final bill contains service tax, you are now obligated to pay that service tax to the government separately. Why? Because the govt knows it can't go after the unorganized sector directly. So they make it inimical for the un-organized sector to remain disorganized. MNCs will transfer their work to companies like Hertz, or other rent-a-car companies and so on. Smaller firms will have to register and become compliant to survive. Widening the tax net, and increase compliance. At the expense of the more established firms. Bizarre? Yeah, its par for the course. ----------------------- Side note: 2 MBA students actually tried to live at 100 Rs/day and then Rs 32 a day. At the 32 mark, they said travel was out of the question because the calorific/time effort required to move that distance to get to a bus station would have curtailed other equally important activities. (http://rs100aday.com/about/ http://rs100aday.com/about/)
  - kamaal 14y ago
    I agree with you in principle. But the point in discussion is why do people need to be provided food for free? Clearly if they are not able to buy for a real long time- This indicates they are not earning enough. So fixing that makes more sense than fixing problems in the free food program. Because if we fix the affordability issue we will not need the free food program at the first place. Yes the distribution system is broken. I think a step to fix that was tried- FDI in retail was good. Companies could buy directly from the farmers, eliminating middle men and the entire inefficient distribution cycle. But I and you know well the political opposition to those reforms.
- if_else 14y ago
  because giving freebies makes people feel good. There are two parts of problems: one is to make people satisfied that they are helping others; another is to help others.
- king_jester 14y ago
  I don't understand this mentality. Even the most developed countries have problems with people going hungry for a variety of reasons. Why shouldn't food be free? Why is it that you must pay to eat? Reducing basic human requirements to dependency on economies and money will always leave some people out. To say that food should not be free is to say that you value wealth and economy over people's lives. In fact, as technology makes it easier to produce more food, we should be using that abundance to provide food to anyone that wants it.
- deepGem 14y ago
  We cannot boost agricultural productivity with the current mono/dual crop culture, in a country like India. That's because there's very little 'new' land available for agriculture. So you have to boost the yield in the existing land and even that doesn't scale really well. To solve the food problem, we should start eating animals that reproduce really fast, pigs and rodents :), no matter how disgusting it is, to even think about.
- lolcraft 14y ago
  I can guess from where this sort of, seeing the market as a moralistic play, comes from. Macroeconomics can, via some stretching of the perfect-markets hypothesis, be transformed into this almost-Calvinist cosmology, where the virtuous labourers will be blessed with an eventual retirement, and the sinful free-loaders will be punished with the sin of contentment. I guess you worked hard all your life, too. It's the classic "I think I made it without help so fuck everyone else", plus some missionary fervour, Saint Theresa style: "don't give them free stuff! They must earn it or else they won't see the light!". First, nobody can pull ten million jobs from their ass. Like, what the fuck do you propose they work on? Should we hire ten or twenty Indians to make us sandwiches that we won't eat? To farm more food that nobody will eat? There's simply not enough demand for labour today. If those people that were starving today were instead fairly rich, and could buy something, yeah, sure, there would be more demand for that labour that could create that something. Second, we are talking about, like, giving them food. It's not like the developed world sat and decided to give each beggar a Mercedes. Apparently you think barely feeding them for a while will turn them into lazy asses without no ambitions such as, I don't know, an apartment, a car, a 40" TV screen and two or three kids. Maybe so. I don't see how it follows.
  - genwin 14y ago
    I think there's plenty of evidence that free food does more harm than good in the long run, outside of emergency situations that couldn't reasonably be planned for. In the long run millions of beggars wouldn't have been born in the first place if free food hadn't been available. (That's not to say that beggars are always caused by free food.) Humans aren't much different than ducks in this regard.
    - anu_gupta 14y ago
      > In the long run millions of beggars wouldn't have been born in the first place if free food hadn't been available. You're right, of course, because their parents would have starved to death. A civilised society does not allow its citizens to die of starvation. In the long run of course it would be preferable to not have to give out free food, but until there's a viable alternative, that's what a civilised country does.
- Retric 14y ago
  World GDP is ~70 trillion. Cost of feeding everyone in the world a healthy diet for 1 year = ~2.5 trillion. Or 3.5% of world GDP to feed everyone on the planet, hmm that may or may not be worth it but food is hardly the backbone of the world economy.
- droob 14y ago
  "LIVIN' THE GOOD LIFE, CHUMPS, sittin' here on this dirt floor at subsistence level. GOT IT MADE."
- brown9-2 14y ago
  Because it takes years if not decades to improve agriculture and the economy, and people are starving today.
- bicknergseng 14y ago
  Seems to me like it works if implemented correctly, and that corruption and poor implementation are the root causes. The notion that providing essential services and goods like education, healthcare, and food somehow weakens a society or an economy needs to be squashed so that our global society can focus on how to accomplish those basic tasks.
  - crusso 14y ago
    notion that providing essential services and goods like education, healthcare, and food I can see the benefit of free education. When you educate people, it has a multiplicative effect on the mobility of the individuals. Education has the ability to unlock a great deal of potential in each person which has a seemingly obvious benefit for the rest of the society. I would argue that giving completely free food and healthcare do weaken most societies. The problem is that there's an all-too-large portion of most societies that will avoid working if they can get basic necessities like food, healthcare, and housing met for free. Working is good for people. It gets them out of bed, gets them thinking, gives some people their only exercise, forces people to deal with others socially, and quite literally keeps some folks out of trouble that they'd otherwise get into if they were completely idle. I'm all for a safety net to keep people suffering from catastrophic health problems or temporary situations from dying/starving... but the notion that we should make "free food" a policy is just broken.
- mikeash 14y ago
  > If we help boost agriculture productivity and work on our economy most people will be able to buy food. "Most people" simply isn't good enough. Free markets generally work great for items that are not necessities. Efficiency, variety, and innovation is incentivized. But you always end up with some people who can't afford the items. If they're not a necessity, that's perfectly fine. But food is a necessity, and always having some people who can't afford food is not acceptable.
  - anamax 14y ago
    When's the last time a free market had a famine? How often do "not free" markets have famines? In the US, poor people are fat. They don't lack food. (They don't lack TVs, cars, or houses either.)
    - yarrel 14y ago
      How are the crops doing in the US this summer, btw?
      - anamax 14y ago
        > How are the crops doing in the US this summer, btw? Not particularly well. We'll have to reduce our exports and draw down some of our reserves. In other words, our poor people can continue to be fat, not starving. They might buy fewer TVs for a while or reduce the amount of processed calories to handle the extra cost. We can have several years of bad crops before we'll have a food shortage. Of course, it would help if we stopped using food for automobile fuel. (The brazilians would love to sell us methanol for less but they don't have an early presidential primary.)
    - mikeash 14y ago
      Famine isn't the issue. A famine is when there simply isn't enough food within a population. The issue at hand is when there's enough food that isn't well distributed, which is a completely different phenomenon.
      - 14y ago
- rayiner 14y ago
  > If we help boost agriculture productivity and work on our economy most people will be able to buy food. [Citation needed]
- nayanga 14y ago
  When somebody is ill or weak why do give him/her medicine let body recover by itself, may not work most of the time and it will become severe. The whole idea of helping somebody is to recover from that state.
- rmk 14y ago
  Are you aware that people are dying for lack of food in India? Food is a basic need. Denying food to starving people and letting it rot does not help boost agricultural productivity or help people 'work on our economy'.

kamaal 14y ago

My boss once told me fix the cause, not the effect. Free food subsidies are really doomed for failure. This is in part a lack of long term solutions to these problems. Around 12-15 years back in India everybody had something called 'Ration card'. Its there today too, but back then you were eligible for rations at subsidized prices, I remember standing in long queues outside ration shops for wheat, rice, oil, sugar and kerosene. Needless to say these schemes were a legacy of the communist set up that India had for a long time. Realizing that this is not likely to scale. The government now issued new cards called 'BPL cards'(BPL- Below poverty line). That means this wasn't even for the poor, this was for the poorest among the poor. This is failing too. There are also other food schemes, in my state Karnataka, kids in government schools get mid day meals called 'Akshaya Patra'. Which is largely bad food served. Often contracted to some guy who pays the highest bribe. The food is generally unhygienic and lacks nutrition. I think by now everybody must know these free food schemes are a big failure. The problem is India has huge inefficiencies in agriculture. The farming framework is massively unproductive. There are many reasons for this. Firstly the methods themselves belong to old stone age. Many farmers in villages farm with cows and bulls. Fertilizers/insecticides/pesticides are abused to the core to boost production. Irrigation isn't figured out yet. There are some major dams, but irrigation infrastructure is just totally absent. Droughts and floods are common. We either don't have water when we need it or there is simply too much water and we don't what to do about it. Farming land is subject to division through inheritance. Apart from this the distribution is broken. Tons of grain rots because its not shipped and transported. Middle men act as a parasites in entire food-supply chain and add no value driving the end consumer prices high. There are various experiments carried out especially forming communities in villages to encourage building local reservoirs and other efficient farming methods. But this will take a long time. The political parties are dead opposed to FDI's in retail and farming. There by technology inflow from outside is limited. All this for vote bank politics. Basically India is reeling under effects of its communist past and is held back because of inefficiencies of its political system combined sum total ignorance among the farmers. So its not just corruption there are train of issues that result in these sort of problems.

kshatrea 14y ago

In India, there are several levels of bureaucracy that are involved. The main layer is called the Public Distribution System (PDS), whereby people are issued ration cards and allowed to purchase a certain amount of food at subsidized prices, or in poor families, given it for free. There is a colossal amount of corruption and theft; people simply report grains as sold and sell it on the black market. Due to the immense number of small traders and grocers who take cash and sell stuff without receipts, there are no taxes paid on this, and so everyone involved makes a profit, except for those whom this is supposed to benefit. Also, the sole source of storage are government granaries & silos, where a lot of food has either been found to have rotted, or been stolen. While people on HN are busy reading all the time about various Indian inefficiencies, corruptions and crimes, let us not forget that India's history is a socialist one (and like all socialist economies, the inefficiencies are built into the system - look at Venezuela/Cuba/Argentina/Hungary etc. today), and it is only in the last 20 years that there has been some liberalization and the Indian entrepreneur's spirit has been allowed to flourish. As you can see from all these headlines, there is still a long way to go for free market reforms. There are several sectors like the agricultural sector, energy sector and construction sector, where reforms would help a lot.

zizee 14y ago

Corruption, above all else, is the biggest thing holding humanity back, but I wonder if it is possible to cleanse corruption from a society where it is so deeply ingrained? Are there any good examples of a really corrupt society successfully making the transition to an relatively uncorrupted state?

eckyptang 14y ago
It would be nice but it's part of human nature. It's simply a form of survival. You'd need an external non human entity to prevent it, which inevitably leads to bad science fiction stories being recalled...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
nik61 14y ago
USA - a lot better than it once was, I've heard. So is the UK compared to the 18th Century. Much remains to be done in both cases... Anybody got an effective analysis of how the changes for the better happened (if they really did)?
yk 14y ago
I would argue that the transition from feudal societies to modern nations is a example for such an transition. On a much shorter timescale, there seems to be quite some variability in corruption[1]. And connecting the plot lines, there seems no show stopper at any value of this corruption metric, so there seems to be no problem in principle to move from a very corrupt society to a uncorrupt one on a timescale of 20 years. Playing a bit further with the data, the correlation between corruption and GDP is rather impressive [2]. [1] Google public data explorer link: http://bit.ly/PQ12bj http://bit.ly/PQ12bj [2] Again Google: http://bit.ly/Ttp24m http://bit.ly/Ttp24m
- zizee 14y ago
  Agreed, I was thinking that as well. I wonder if the same factors in transforming those societies all those years ago could be used in the modern world? Or has the world changed so much since then that the same factors could no longer apply? Things like much larger populations, greater mobility and communications may make the solution to corruption a lot different today than what worked in the past.

noobplusplus 14y ago

How are hackers supposed to hack it off? I don't understand why such news travels to the top of HN. In case no one has a soln. for it, why write big posts? IF you gotta do something go and do it, i am pretty sure, the ones who are most concerned won't be hanging around here. This seems to me OT.

kamaal 14y ago
HN is a place people across the world meet. Its a place to learn and know interesting perspectives. Just as there have been discussion on inefficiencies of agriculture in the US, fights in McDonalds over glasses and other US political stuff things like this get discussed. It gives a perspective to people on poverty in the world and how things are else where beyond your cubicle and first world countries.
- noobplusplus 14y ago
  OMG! i didn't know that. Thanks for enlightening me. But i along with other fellow geeks would want to see more tech stuff than why people have got used to corruption and talks about protests etc.
  - louhike 14y ago
    Most articles on HN are about technical subjects so I don't see why you complain about some discussions which are on others topics. If there are news on India corruption on HN, it's because there is a lot of hackers interested in it. If you're not, just ignore these articles.
- biot 14y ago
  According to PG's guidelines, the criteria roughly boils down to whether or not something gratifies your intellectual curiosity. Shall we flood HN with stories of corruption in the Congo, Thailand, Haiti, Russia, Egypt, and so on? Maybe HN should have a weekly feature of poverty-stricken AIDS victims in various countries in Africa? Perhaps title this weekly feature "Poverty Perspectives Beyond the Cubicle"? Stories like these, while tragic, are not new phenomena. Unless one is naive, one should already know that the world is full of corruption and that there isn't anything particularly novel about this brand of corruption. On the other hand, a story about cleverly planted subtle bugs in a high-frequency trading algorithm would make for a great HN story involving corruption since the details would be intellectually gratifying. But plain old selling of supplies meant for the poor? That's been going on forever. How is your intellect gratified by hearing about yet one more case?

lionhearted 14y ago

Serious question -- Stories like this come out of India fairly often. How come the government hasn't been overthrown yet? Or severe riots, insurrections, etc? Seems like that would happen elsewhere, no?

kamaal 14y ago
It happens in India too. There are massive anti-corruption movements in progress. There are also riots, everything exists as else where. Its just that people by now are so used to all these problems so many of them sort of just go by it.
- noobplusplus 14y ago
  Unlike elsewhere protests are peaceful. People sit for fast, and that allows the govt. to easily pass away. The whole political system is full of such people!
aniket_ray 14y ago
I'd say apathy of the masses is the biggest reason that any of the things you mention haven't happened. In this article, for instance, only the poorest of the poor are truly starving and the vast majority just doesn't care enough to protest. While the middle classes are too busy with their own lives, the poorest and most disadvantaged people are too busy trying to eke out a basic living to actually protest about it. Let me try to list some reasons as to why. India has no real opposition party in the centre or most of the states. Most ruling parties end up having uncontrolled power. Corruption has become so pervasive in the Indian pillars of governance that we don't really have a Law & Order System anymore. The Police are corrupt and the judicial system is corrupt. Criminals thrive, as long as they have money. Failure of the Law & Order system encourages corruption in the political class. The times that an opposition party does become a bit powerful, they end up being just as corrupt as the ruling party. Most Indian election candidates use the support of various mafia and unscrupulous businessmen to win elections. Once they win this way, they need to help such people now that they are in power. Over a period of time, these issues have become so pervasive in the Indian system that today the educated and the middle classes stay away from politics. They live in their own laissez-faire life with private utilities, security and medicine. They pay their taxes but don't expect much from the government in return as long as the government doesn't interfere or hinder them. The powerful media is too busy and is rarely anti-government because government advertising forms a big part of their revenues. So they don't carry such stories for long. The media has their own pressures since they have to keep circulations high by keeping the prices virtually free. A section of the civil society had been trying to hold anti-corruption protests in recent times. They started with a lot of support but soon the media lost interest in them and nobody really pays any attention to their rallies anymore. Now for all these reasons, the middle classes are mostly apathetic to the plight of the poor or the fact that the rich are exploiting the nation.

eplanit 14y ago

No disrespect to the people described in the article, but how is this relevant on HN?

nik61 14y ago
Yet again (from HN guidelines): "What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." This is one of the main things that makes HN such a potent forum throughout the world.

anovikov 14y ago

No 'public distribution system' can ever fix any of problems society faces. It just makes government bigger, in the end making things worse. Maybe it's okay in big cities where you give free food to avoid people killing for it, i.e. suppressing crime, but works only in conjunction with strong law enforcement. Nobody is going to become a better/more productive person because (s)he received free food for years.

lilsunnybee 14y ago
Everyone has received free food for years: it's called childhood. Saying that just because someone has their most basic needs provided for they won't strive for a better life is preposterous.

simula67 14y ago

First of let me say that I am from India. I have been watching the number of (negative) political posts regarding India on HN for quite some time now[1] What are the benefits and costs of discussing these issues here on HN? Some benefits: 1. It gives rise to a discussion which hopefully translates to solutions and actions for future 2. It is a nice break from discussing technology ( ?? ) Some costs: 1. HN being an international forum, it gives an idea that India is choke full of problems that nothing good will come out of India [2]. No wonder latest discussion on India's Mars vision was derided along the lines of "Get food to your people first" 2. It is not of interest to a large number of hackers 3. It is a fertile ground for armchair theorizing. I am of the opinion these stories should be flagged. [1]http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=india&start=0 http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=ind... [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias

praj_na 14y ago
I concur with [3]. This was also a front page article on reddit which is probably a better suited place for such discussions
genwin 14y ago
Such stories shouldn't be flagged according to the submission guidelines.

auser678 14y ago

This makes me so angry and sad. I see such corruption happening everyday. Uttar Pradesh is a state of 200 million people and one of the most backward and corrupt states.It is another fact that Uttar Pradesh due to the sheer number produces some of the best talent in India and the world. Most of these people migrate out of Lucknow and UP. I wish more of them would come back and try to build companies so that more jobs are created. We just watch from far and lament but do nothing about it. We have made a small start by being based here, and hope we can make an impact.

huntesh 14y ago

thanks to the contention arising due to equitable distribution of food among the states, the grains rots in the godowns again. another major disadvantage of democracy.

ycycyc 14y ago

Does anyone keep in perspective that the biggest achievement of independent India is avoiding famines thanks partly to the help of the "rotten" PDS? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famines_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famines_in_India I think this article follows a pattern of op-eds in India: the private sector eyes a plump public-sector undertaking. Suddenly there is a series of articles often pointing at the weakest link in the chain - Uttar Pradesh or Bihar is always there to be poster boys of decay, the articles never focus on functional systems in the south, like Kerala or TamilNadu - and then libertarians chime in on how any kind of sharing/caring/government is bad. Lo and behold, due to the weight of public opinion, the sector is sold off - classic crony capitalism.

patio11 14y ago

If you can buy a Pepsi in every village in India, why can’t the government get us our rations? This is a quote for the ages.

kamaal 14y ago
This actually speaks volumes of the true nature of the problem. The problem is distribution and affordability. You can buy Pepsi for ten rupees, and the fact that its everywhere talks a lot of Pepsi's distribution model.

ramsetal 14y ago

this is the real story that really depress me!

j45 14y ago

I have read that there is no rule of law in India, meaning corruption from top to bottom so deep that the average person is living a more and more miserable life.

j45 14y ago
Appreciate the downmod, would appreciate a reason/discussion about the above even more

npguy 14y ago

I am surprised why nobody has questioned the harsh language in the title. Read it again - Poor starve as politicians Steal - "Steal"?

yarrel 14y ago

The market wants people to die. All we can do is help it decide how many. Apparently.