Double Standards on Wastage

A couple of days back, I heard that the government of Karnataka banned an event called “Le Tomatina”. What’s that, you ask? It’s a copy of a similar festival in Spain where people pelt (huge amounts of) tomatoes at each other for fun. You can also see it in song from the movie, Zindagi Na Milegi Doobara.

The reason for the ban makes sense: How can it be right to waste food like this, especially in a country where so many starve or barely get enough to eat? For once, a politician did something right. So far so good. A couple of days later, though, I saw a bunch of people performing sheerabhishekam (pouring milk) on giant placards of a Kannada movie star because it was his birthday.

I don’t get this: how can it be OK to waste food in one case but not the other? And while everyone likes to criticize lavish spending during weddings, pouring milk down the drain evokes no response. Wonder why? It’s almost as if wasting, per se, is neither good nor bad. Rather, the attitude seems to be to tolerate or condemn wastage based on the economic status of the person doing the wasting. So the rich and middle class shouldn’t waste, but the poor can. Seems kind of twisted.

Comments

  1. KumarSeptember 21, 2011 at 1:43 PM

    You got it!

    Milk and other important edible items are wasted away like that on various idols, which are always on temple deities and sometimes on film-stars and celebrities who appeal to the masses. We never liked the idea of food wastage in any form and for any reason. But, since food and religion go hand in hand in Hindu religion, it is difficult to influence the people who cling to such practices of food wastage in the name of God. Due to the same reason many temples are unhygienic places too, but does anyone care?

    At least the politician decides clearly where religious card cannot be played, as in 'Le Tomatino'! Most certainly we do not need any tomato bash-up-revelries here. We should avoid food waste in every possible way - at home and in public places.

    From time to time, we read in the papers that thousands and thousands of food grains are wasted because of government's inability to store and protect the grains properly. No government official of politician has any care in this matter. They know to give grand excuses and pass the buck; they go on and on with these. In the mean time - if the estimates are correct - nearly 20 to 25 per cent of food-grains go to either feeding the rodents or keep rotting. They become unusable while our poor millions starve for food.

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