Can you remember Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun? Teenager Jammie was taught well enough that ‘A man can do anything for a potato’.
World War II was at the end and Jammie was accidentally captured by the Japanese army and taken to a concentration camp.
Here he saw and felt how a human reacts to the food crisis, how one fights and finds a way to be fed. Eventually, Jammie had to learn very well how to surrender for a Can of Beer and how to hide rotten potatoes beneath the shroud.
The wars go to an end. The new era begins. But those camps remain till today, in a different format. The airstreams of those concentration camps are now in outer places, at your home, at the market, at third world countries, at the kitchen of UK and US, or incidentally, in everywhere!
Forget about Sudanese; (I mean, nothing could be done only by remembering or mourning for those thin humanlike children) just think about yourself, your past, go back to 5 years earlier. What do you see? Can you imagine, your hands full of mangoes, which were just dragged from the field? Is tongue lick? Perhaps, no! You might have already forgotten, how it was felt to get mangoes from a certain field after a bit of storm.
Mangoes are not going to be extinct. But it was not like before. Now you can only get those green nostalgic fruit at the rate of tk. 100-150 per kilo at the beginning of the season. Tastes sour? Living under less than a dollar a day is considered below standard.
But soon it will become so much as usual that one has to estimate that standard by one or two potatoes per day. Days are becoming drier, more barren, and hotter.
Greenhouse gases are fuelling the F16s of hunger. The worst situation in the history of civilization seems to be knocking and the doors aren’t strong enough to stand for two or three decades.
Washington Post reports Food: The new Gold. It means a lot. It means food will soon become more precious than gold. It is not some sort of prediction; it is a testimony of an inevitable crisis, which is so strong that humanity may be swept away forever. UN considers 37 nations to be in crisis due to recent price hikes. Hunger and civil unrest are rising in an alarming rate in those regions. People are becoming outrageous day by day.
If the recent situation is compared with the previous two or three decades, anybody can feel a huge uncertainty, global insecurity. There is a vivid possibility of facing a new dimension of war, food, and water. More than 73 million people in 78 countries that depend on food handouts from the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) are facing reduced rations this year. What will those poorer do in the upcoming days? Society will soon become surveillance. Strong nations (which have not yet faced scarcity of food) will make such offers for the poorer, that can’t be refused. They will act like Godfathers and consider those increasingly hungry communities as subordinates, or sometimes as offenders.
At the time of soaring food prices, the population is increasing rapidly. By 2050 another 3 billion people are going to be fed. According to the World Bank estimation global demand for food will be doubled by 2030. A single example- last week in Haiti a crowd of people marched through streets, throwing stones and chanting ‘We are hungry’, in front of the presidential palace. Tiers were burned and several died. From China to Australia, Mauritania to West Bengal, food is becoming a synonym of far cry.
UN’s ration goes down, Bush will soon decide to sign another bill, which will permit to buy South African or Ethiopian wheat and ship it to the hungry people elsewhere in Africa. But the scenario will not standstill. Soon, food aid will be limited (or sometimes prohibited) by law to increase domestic reserve or to control price.
The nightmare of famine will take place for eternity. Those people will start forgetting themselves as humans. They will not even get the opportunity to say like Jammie, ‘I Surrender! (For food)’ Soon the hungry people and Nations will realize, they have to surrender to those who have food, power, or something (arms?) which has the potential to get food by threatening others. The poorer nations become camps of practicing imperialism. The powerful (full of foods) nations will start thinking that, others are under their empire. Then what will be the practical joke? The answer is- Hunger Strike! In the concentration camp, that has no meaning at all! If there is no food, then no one to hear the fury of the poor.