The Pakistani Spectator

Intensifying food shortage across the globe, and especially in the third world countries like Pakistan has got many nightmares in store, which are steadily becoming reality one by one, and the heightening inflation, rampant hoarding, lack of water, dearth of harvesting land, and mismanagement of crops have made the matters worst.

It’s a rancid vituperative fact that the obesity rates in United States are very high, whereas in the Asia and Africa millions of people are dying due to hunger and malnutrition. Majority of the developing nations depend upon the staple food like wheat and rice for their survival, and despite of producers of this staple food, these countries are finding it hard to even meet the basic food requirements of their own people.

The multinationals of United States, in the name of globalization and free trade control the harvest of developing countries, and most of the food either gets exported or get smuggled for the need of developed world. This need is fulfilled either in the home countries of US or UK, or they it is sent to the troops deployments in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. The neo-libera’s notion of leaving everything at the mercy of market forces has pushed the world at the brink of global famine.

Nature is very generous and not cruel. There is enough food on this planet for everyone, and every incoming child comes with his quote of food. It’s this mal-distribution of food which is causing the problem. Things are rapidly becoming very precarious in the developing world, where food riots are becoming a norm.

Pakistani is an agricultural country and more than 70% of our population lives in the villages and their profession is the agriculture. Pakistan’s Punjab province is famous for it’s wheat and rice production, and this area has been fulfilling the needs of the whole country for all these years and each year the surplus wheat and rice was exported. There are still those bumper crops and there are still those farmers and their lands, but the problem now is that they are controlled by large corporations, who just keep their profits in perspectives.

Another problem with Pakistan is that much of the wheat and rice is smuggled to Afghanistan to appease the appetite of NATO forces, and you know about the termite-like appetite of these marines. They have eaten Pakistan out, and they are demanding more. The famine like situation in Pakistan is due to this smuggling, and the fainthearted Pakistani government doesn’t have the guts to stop it.

This is yet another aspect of Bush’s war on terror. In the name of this bloody war on terror, Bush is accumulating oil from Iraq and food from Afghanistan.

Last 5 posts by Dr. Hassan Isfahani

• Deadline to NWFP Government By Talibans - July 23rd, 2008
• Woes of Small Investors in Karachi Stock Exchange - July 19th, 2008
• Defaming Dictatorship - July 19th, 2008
• No New 9/11 - July 16th, 2008
• Faisalabad on Strike : Millions Suffering - July 12th, 2008