The Hindu : Front Page : Shabana on hunger

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Tuesday, Sep 25, 2007
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Shabana on hunger

Prachi Pinglay

Mumbai: “What if my mother is going to bed hungry, what if my daughter, what if my spouse, is going hungry? Then you realise how chilling it is,” said actor-activist Shabana Azmi, before leaving for New York for a “hunger free” campaign with a special protest event to be staged on September 25.

Talking to The Hindu, Ms. Azmi emphasised the need to make “hunger” an “emotive issue” and not limit it to figures. “One in four children goes to bed hungry every day. This needs to become an emotive issue,” she said, adding that the government must work to put enough food on the plate, instead of merely working on lofty ideas.

The U.N. Millennium Development Goal of reducing hunger by half by 2015 is nowhere near being met, the development organisation Action Aid, which Ms. Asmi represents, points out. In fact, hunger has become more desperate, Ms. Azmi said. With 35,000 people dying of hunger every day and governments failing to meet their commitment to halve hunger, Action Aid hopes to discuss the issue in a major way at the 62nd UN General Assembly.

Large infrastructure projects such as Special Economic Zones will result in greater displacement and more hunger, she said. One has to look at “whose development and at whose cost.”

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