Two decades earlier, the nation felt outraged when a major newspaper bought a woman for Rs 2000. The intrepid reporter, who risked his life to investigate the shoddy and inhuman trade, wrote in his columns that even a pair of shoes would cost more. It doesn't require the investigating skills of Ashwini Sarin anymore to lift the veil behind which remains the hidden face of India Shining. You can now buy a child for less than what you pay for a bottle of mineral water.

As abject poverty remains buried behind the façade of the feel good factor, there is excitement in the air. The German luxury carmaker, DaimlerChrysler, has announced the launch of the most luxurious car in the world, in India. At Rs 5 crore a piece, the upwardly mobile have already begun to queue up. This comes at a time when Sachin Tendulkar has regained his form. Also, when Amitabh Bachchan has been named as the brand ambassador for Uttar Pradesh.

Selling dreams is no longer the prerogative of Bollywood.

Despite the Planning Commission pulling down the percentage of poor and poverty stricken from its unread documents, the magic trick of playing with numbers hasn't made any difference to the growing disparities. Amidst recurring political elections, and the brazen marketing hype to sell images of growth and development, the shameful paradox of hunger at times of plenty has been quietly buried under heaps of grain that continue to rot in the open. That 75 lakh people, more than the population of Switzerland, had applied for a mere 38,000 lowly-paid jobs in the Indian Railways, is no longer a matter of concern at times when the country is on a fast track information highway. Not to discount the achievements in information technology, the fact remains that IT has provided only five lakh job opportunities.

Meanwhile, hunger continues to grow in India, which alone has one-third of the world's estimated 860 million people who go to bed hungry, and that too at times of plenty. In fact, hunger and poverty have proved to be robustly sustainable. Directly related to growing unemployment, reports of gnawing hunger and starvation deaths in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa hit the national headlines time and again. In 2002, reports of hunger and starvation deaths have also regularly poured in from the country's progressive and economically fast-growing cyberstates - Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

At the same time, India continues to make room for exporting surplus foodgrains. That an estimated 320 million people desperately need food, despite more than 60 million tones stocked in the open at the turn of the century, had failed to evoke any political expediency. In fact, 17 million tonnes of the surplus food actually meant for the hungry, was exported in 2002 at below the poverty line prices. No political leader, including the distinguished nominated members to the Rajya Sabha, even thought of bringing the shameful paradox to the attention of Parliament.

While people die of hunger, the government sits atop a mountain of food grains. In 2001, starvation deaths were reported in over 13 states while the storage facilities of the Food Corporation of India (FCI) - were full of grains, some of it rotting and rat-infested. There was a proposal to dump it in the sea, to make storage space for the next crop, when export markets could not be found for this surplus. Such was the quantity of food kept in the open, that if each bag was stacked one upon the other, there was no need to launch a scientific expedition to put a man on the moon. You could simply walk to the moon and come back.

The ground realities are far removed from the rhetoric and the statistics that have bred immunity against compassion. We are all part of a global system, which perpetuates poverty and deprivation. We make tall claims of feeling good by pushing stark realities of growing poverty and hunger from the public glare. We are, therefore, in reality, the cause behind hunger. Behaving like an Ostrich is surely not going to eclipse hunger from the politico-economic radar screens. It requires determination and will.

* Zero Hunger: First and foremost, it requires the political leadership to accept the extent of crisis, to accept that hunger exists in the country, and to then launch a time bound programme towards eradicating hunger. If Brazil can launch a programme for 'zero hunger', there is no reason why India cannot demonstrate political maturity to combat the national shame.

* Task Force: If a ministry can be set up for disinvestments, another for information technology, and still another for food processing, there is no reason why a high ranking task force cannot be constituted with the clear cut mandate of removing hunger. The task force should be directly under the supervision of the Prime Minister.

* Public Policy: The task force should oversee the economic policies to ensure that there is no contradiction in government's resolve. Zero hunger should not be construed as a mass mid-day meal programme but be directed towards building sustainable livelihoods that helps build the capacity of the poor to emerge out of poverty and hunger.