Why Are We So Mean?

THREE months ago, the world suddenly woke up to the fact that southern Sudan was in the grip of yet another drought that was killing people, especially children, like flies. The UN sent out an urgent appeal for food. Sudan desperately needed food to tide over the next few months because some two million people were in acute danger of starvation. India had, at that moment, over 26 million tonnes of foodgrains in its stocks. But it did not even occur to the government that it might commit a quarter million tonnes to Sudan.

Last month, food riots broke out in Indonesia. The 74 per cent decline in the rupiah's value had sent prices skyrocketing even while it destroyed enterprises and jobs by the million. By the end of July, 80 million Indonesians had been driven below the poverty line. Vast numbers of the newly unemployed went back to their villages to live off their relatives. But Indonesia has developed an urban proletariat. What's more, as in India, the cities have a large informal sector where work has vanished. In desperation the starving poor are looting warehouses and shops.

Since most trade is in the hands of ethnic Chinese, the looting is turning into rioting, and that, by degrees, is threatening to turn into genocide. To prevent this and a general breakdown of society, Indonesia desperately needed to create some form of unemployment insurance and assured supply of food. It has appealed to the world for help and needs specifically, four million tonnes of rice.

Did it occur to the government to hold out a helping hand? Did it occur to the government to offer Indonesia a substantial amount of rice to tide over its crisis, even as a loan? The answer once more is 'no'.

Whenever anyone raises this question the answer is invariably the same. 'How can we afford to give away foodgrains when our people do not have enough to eat'? Or a variant: 'How can any government do this without enraging the public and giving the opposition an opportunity to attack it?' This is where the meanness of our politicians' minds shows itself. India has been burdened by embarrassingly large surpluses of foodgrains in 10 of the last 15 years. Over this period millions of tonnes of foodgrains have rotted, because much of the food is still stored in the open on raised plinths covered with polythene sheets. Since wheat is hygroscopic, that is, absorbs moisture from the air, it suffers most. But weather, humidity, rodents and pests have not spared rice stocks either.

This year, India is exceptionally well-placed to offer food to other nations because its stocks are close to an all-time peak and set to rise further. On July 1, which is one of the two benchmark dates for assessing food stocks in the country, the government had 28.5 million tonnes of foodgrains. The buffer stock norm for the date was 22.3 million tonnes, so the country had a comfortable surplus of 6.2 million tonnes. Wheat procurement ended on July 31 after setting a record of 12.65 million tonnes. This was 3.35 million tonnes more than last year. But sales by the ration shops came to only 7.375 million tonnes from July '97 to June this year. Overall, wheat stocks increased by 7.3 million tonnes during the year.

The stock of rice on July 1 was 4 million tonnes higher than a year earlier. This year the rice crop is expected to be about the same as last year, but it is going to be a bumper crop in precisely the areas where four-fifths of the stocks are procured—Punjab, Haryana and western UP. Punjab is expecting to procure 12 million tonnes this year against 10 million last year. If Haryana and western UP also increase their procurement, the total procurement will comfortably exceed the 15.556 million tonnes procured from July 1997 to June 1998. Sales of rice by contrast were only 10.937 million tonnes. There is thus no conceivable increase in the offtake of rice in the next 12 months that can prevent the buffer stock from rising further.

India can therefore well afford to offer food to countries in difficulty. It should do this because today humanitarian reasons for doing so are backed strongly by cold realpoli-tik. In June when the UN sent out its appeal for Sudan, there was a concerted effort being made by the Western nations to isolate India from the world community. The UN Security Council had just been used to censure India for not observing a treaty that it had not signed. A variety of covert moves were also being made to use every trick in the book to deny India technology and worst of all to impose trade sanctions upon it by the backdoor of anti-dumping duties. Sending food to Sudan would have been one way of showing the world that India could not be isolated; that it had the means and the capacity to influence events; and that it was not a weak and helpless nation. In short it would have been a gentlemanly way of showing the west that its sanctions and disapproval were water off India's back.

The reasons for helping Indonesia are even more compelling. This is the largest country in ASEAN, and in many ways a rival to India for influence in the Southeast Asian region. In the past it has been less than eager to welcome India into ASEAN, but it shares India's worldview on many international issues and is a powerful potential ally. What is more, only a month earlier, Indonesia had been one of four countries in ASEAN that blunted western efforts to severely condemn India and Pakistan's nuclear tests, and foiled the West and China's efforts to link its censure to the UN's censure of the two countries under Security Council resolution No.

1172, at the ARF meeting the next day. Most significant of all, when the leader of the Indian delegation, Mr Jaswant Singh, offered India's support of ASEAN's move to make its region a nuclear-free one (which would deny right of passage to nuclear armed ships and aircraft) as a nuclear power, Indonesia took the lead in welcoming the offer, 'from a nuclear power'. Helping Indonesia now with a large loan of rice, to be paid back at some future date when India might be in need, would therefore be a gracious quid pro quo for Indonesia's support. It would also immensely strengthen India's relations with ASEAN.

Why do such strategies not occur to our policy makers? One reason is that we have grown used to thinking of ourselves as poor. We have grown so used to expecting, and indeed demanding, aid and sympathy that it seldom crosses our minds that we are no longer a poor nation and are in a position to dispense some of both to others. This is not charity but good politics, for it reinforces India's claim to becoming an independent centre of power in the world, albeit not a very big one. But we will never become significant until we stop thinking of ourselves as insignificant.