June 24, 2008

The Corporate Grip on Food Tightens

They've Got the World by the Belly

By P. SAINATH

When you’re down to distributing fertilizer from a police station, you have a problem. It’s what they did in Hingoli, here in the Indian state of in Maharashtra. That was a week ago, but the police are still, in a sense, involved in its distribution there and elsewhere. In Hingoli itself, there are lots of policemen controlling the queues outside dealers’ outlets. The dealers won’t open up otherwise. Thanks to the police, Hingoli’s farmers got some fertilizer. Sort of gives a whole new meaning to the acronym PDS. Police Distribution System.

In Nanded, cops wielding riot sticks charged angry farmers demanding fertilizer needed urgently with the rains setting in. In Akola, there is heavy police security precautions for the same reasons. More than one Agriculture Officer has fled his workplace to escape mobs.

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