Often when I am doing nutrition consultation for a ‘spoilt Indian’, I am confronted with the grave realities of the disparities in our society. Who is a spoilt Indian? A person who in spite of all the resources to eat sensibly, be aware, and live a balanced life, gets into a pattern of eating anything and everything merely to satisfy taste.
All spoilt folk want a panacea, a miracle cure which ensures that their lifestyle is not affected and yet they can have the benefits of youthful energy and good health. They will not flinch at spending on designer clothes or travel abroad. But to spend marginally more on better, safer and cleaner food, which can make a big difference to their insides rather than outsides, becomes an economic issue. They get their palates accustomed to caviar and raw oysters to keep up with society, but ask them to savour brown rice and you get a contemptuous look or snort of bewilderment.
Well it’s your health and your life, I feel like telling my clients. With every complaint of aches and pains, I feel like telling them of the millions on earth who survive on only one meal a day and that too not a ‘square’ one. Every time I’m late for a meal or for whatever reason am forced to experience the pangs of hunger, I cringe to think at how for so many humans this is a daily reality and often one that leads to death.
At the recent MIFF (Mumbai International Film Festival) there was a boycott by some documen-tary filmmakers who opposed censorship of their films which contradict the feel-good India Shining propaganda blitz of the ruling dispensation in New Delhi. Therefore simultaneously just across the road from the MIFF venue, a parallel film festival of filmmakers who boycotted MIFF was staged under the Vikalp (films for freedom) banner. Often authorities don’t realise that by controlling too much they give vent to parallel movements that do more ‘damage’ than they can imagine.
Anyways thanks to Vikalp we got to see films depicting true ground conditions in India. A film by Sagari Chabra entitled Hunger in the Time of Plenty explored the irony of starvation deaths in an era of food surpluses. The film showed godowns overflowing with foodgrains being eaten by rats and weevils but denied to 50 million people who it alleges are on the verge of starvation. This despite a 60 million tonne food reserve when the need is for only 20! Sagari explains in the film how money set aside for the hungry rarely reaches them: contractors usurp it before it reaches its destination. So even though there may not be a real food shortage, hunger pangs are a live reality for millions of Indians, who are reduced to mere statistics. If India is shining, the majority of its inhabitants have yet to experience the glow.
I will mention only some films here to bring to light that while the spoilt city person worries about where she gets her vitamin E or magnesium from, there are far graver issues that confront our fellow citizens. For instance, the issue of safe drinking water. A film entitled Bitter Drink brilliantly depicts the story of the people of Plachimada, a sleepy hamlet in Kerala, who were initially very excited to learn that the world famous Coca-Cola Corporation had selected their town to build a bottling plant in the year 2000. But soon they realised that a bottling plant guzzles thousands of litres of ground water everyday. As a result, neighbouring wells went dry, the quality of ground water became unfit for use, and their agriculture economy was adversely affected by contaminated water as also by the solid and toxic effluents from the plant. Fortunately this David and Goliath story resulted in the closure of the plant.
A film made by Green Peace details environmental disasters in seven states. The leather industry in Vellore, Tamil Nadu, dumps its toxic waste into rivers, thereby polluting them. Ditto the Bhadravati which is being ruined by the state government owned Mysore Paper and Pulp Ltd. The Periyar in Kerala suffers the same fate as do many other rivers across the country. The owners claim that the costing of their businesses including subsidies given by the government do not allow for transportation to the sea for dumping purposes. This brought home a point I have been trying to make for a long time. If you get a product cheap, question how you got it at that price. Is the labour paid at least minimum wages? Is the waste dealt with efficiently? What is the quality of the raw material used? You need to ask yourself these questions.
However not all films were negative. some of them showed how affected people are fighting back to preserve their environments. Jardhar Diary a film by Krishnendu Bose portrays how some villages are reviving their forests by fighting limestone mining on their hill slopes and staving off power lines, which will decimate their rich pine and sal cover. Similarly Aamakaar by Surabhi Sharma depicts the fight of a village in north Kerala to preserve its shoreline, and its livelihood threatened by estuary sand mining. For the past ten years they have been conserving the endangered Olive Ridley Turtles that come to the beaches to nest. Yes, besides human rights, unless we begin understanding animal rights we are doomed because their survival is crucial to ours.
Another beautiful film Kandal Pokkudan narrates the true story of an old man from north Kerala who spent his life saving mangroves. In 1994 research on mangroves revealed that besides keeping the water boundaries intact, they serve as fish nurseries. Birds nest in them, their droppings serving as food for fish, anti-leprosy medicine is made from them and some mangroves are eaten. The old man now in his sunset years is truly an earth hero and a soldier of mankind.
If we cannot be like him, let’s at least not add to the burden of planet Earth. The diversity of the environment is wortrh conserving. Let’s use our freedom to make earth-friendly choices. As the late Martin Luther King said, “An injury to one is injury to all.”
(Kavita Mukhi is a Mumbai-based eco-nutritionist and CEO of Conscious Food)