Shabeer Ahmed
WHILE the world is experiencing severe economic recession due to the Coronavirus pandemic, which according to the IMF is far worse than the Great Recession of 2009, now its awful effects are being felt in the form of shortage of food, unemployment, depression and mental issues. Can you imagine as to how the most horrible scenario would be there if food crisis turn hard-hitting? Who will save the people dying from hunger?
Can our nuclear technology, our industrial infrastructure, our social media companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and our so-called economic theories can keep us alive without food? What about our tall and magnificent buildings like Burj Khalifa, Eifel Tower, the Great Wall of China and Wall Street? Have they any solution to hunger? Can the G-7 group have the capability to look after the food crisis? Is the United Nations able to resolve this issue if it spreads in the world like the current pandemic? Which country will survive and which will perish?
Agree with me or not, the current economic system has no capability to save the world from poverty and hunger? Socialism is already dead. Communism, Marxism, Maoism are the stories of the past. The new Liberalism and Interest-based banking system have also failed to deliver and meet the expectations of people. To tell the truth, they even cannot do anything when according to FAO more than 820 million people around the world still do not have enough to eat. They cannot do anything when they know the fact that around 1.85 billion people, or 36% of the world’s population, live in extreme poverty. Closely half the population in developing countries lives on less than $1.25 a day.
They are unable to put an end to child labour, child abuse, and child hunger, why should they be trusted and expected that they would deliver. They can’t and they won’t. When the famine and drought hit Somalia and many parts of Africa, our international organizations couldn’t stop them. Today, when the world stands on the brink of unprecedented famine and the most menacing one is yet to accompany the Covid-19, we see no planning on behalf of our governments and NGOs except colourful reports. Roughly 30 million people have already come into contact with alarming hunger, austere level of food insecurity and malnutrition in north-eastern Nigeria, Sudan and Yemen. What are the causes of this situation? Are they manmade or God sent such a widespread hunger? Who is to blame?
It is being said that chances of surviving from Coronavirus and others are 99.9%, but can we deny there are no chances of survival for people without food. People can live with HIV, Ebola, dengue, flu, and other deadly viruses and diseases, but no one has been reported to be surviving without eating food. From this time, when the United Nations and other organizations warned of a famine, we did not take it seriously. We thought and are continuously doing so that they are joking. We think no famine is coming. By nature, we actually do not take any warning seriously, but when the calamity hits us then we realize and feel sorry. Do you know long ago the scientists had warned us of Coronavirus, but we paid a deaf ear to it? We did not work in advance to stop it. Now, the whole world is suffering.
The manmade crises that fetch a famine is the outcome of very bad things such as widespread corruption, thinking evil of other nations, mismanagement, political prejudice and inharmonious behaviour of governments that love to indulge in hatching conspiracies in destabilizing government systems and economies of other countries are very disastrous for the human race. When the lockdown continues and business closed, millions of people would lose their jobs. And when people become unemployed, who would feed them and their families? How will they survive? Can a vaccine save them? Can interest on loans do away with their fears and wipe their tears?
Think if similar to Coronavirus, hunger becomes a serious global issue, how savage, vicious and cruel nations of the world would be. As of now, in the United States, UK and in some other countries, the governments are making hard decisions as who is to live and who is to die, but when there is famine, there would be no energy and no power to take decisions like who is to get food and who is to starve. This is a very alarming. Though sooner or later, we would be able to create Coronavirus vaccine, but no one has any idea that if God forbid the famine takes place and people start dying, no vaccine could save them dying from hunger. Let’s wake up.
—The writer is a freelancer, media and public relations specialist.
