Continuous needs of present India

In India, in the last two decades, liberalisation of the economy has worked very well as we have progressed in all fields—telecommunications, commerce, education and so on. But the Indian way of carrying of social welfare schemes is not efficiently run. Government makes policies which are not implemented transparently. We cannot seem to eliminate poverty or hunger. When investigations are made, it is found that the funds for welfare schemes do not reach the people for whom it was meant for.

There are some successes; for example, the rural employment guarantee scheme (MGREGA) has had the effect of arresting the rural to urban migration. People would prefer to get some way of getting an income near their home than risk travelling to a city where they may or may not find work.

But food schemes are not reaching the people. It is difficult to identify the poor for whom free food grains could be provided for. We are now trying to provide identity to an individual by giving them identity cards based on bio-metrics (fingerprinting or iris imaging) Universal “Public Distribution Scheme” may work out better than the long process of identifying and reaching the “poor”.

Hundred years ago people of working age (15–60) were healthier than people now, as the quality for food grains was better then. Now the people working ages of (15-30) need more food to work for eight hours a day in rural lands, as quality of food grains has now reduced. Since work is now distributed to younger age group, it has meant that the older weaker people(who are not able to work) have become “the unemployed” group and therefore require help from welfare schemes. In other words, more persons are unemployed than ever before. Thus we are more “poor” now than hundred years ago.

Community kitchens (where all persons would eat together) will not work in India for cultural reasons. For us, home means a hearth where all of a family would dine together. We cannot keep our identity of our home in a public dining area. Only when we are reduced to  the condition of a refugee, such sharing of dining space could be done. For a day or two, we can dine with all, but it would not be a long term solution.

With the need for food, comes the conventional necessity of housing or need of a home. So the train of needs continues to grow. These are needs of the present, to be addressed by future India.