Dailekhis grabbing the rotten rice is a crude irony to our society just like, umm…. let’s say, the hi-fi UN vehicles running on the streets of Kathmandu. Wish the rice had gone to the needy hands on time.
Moonshiners in Dailekh district headquarters scavenge rotten rice before it could be disposed of, Thursday (28 June). The rice was supplied under the UN’s World Food Program decomposed after being stored for four years. All pics by Harihar Singh Rathaur via Kantipur
The story: Four years ago, the World Food Program dispatched over 366 quintals of rice to Jumla district under the “food for work” program. As there was no motorable road up to Jumla, the rice got stuck at Dailekh, waiting for the Consumers and District Development Committees to carry it farther. The Jumlis did not trek down to Dailekh to carry the rice because carrying a sack of rice would have taken too much time and money. Obviously, for the Jumlis, there was no point in fetching the WFP rice from Dailekh.
Ch..Ch..Ch Concluding that the stored rice had become highly toxic, the local administration had prepared to bury the rice. They even refused to dump the toxic rice into a river as it could have contaminated the river and destroyed the ecosystem. As officials were about to bury the food, there came the poor people who wanted to eat the rice. They came and, as you can see in the accompanying photos, grabbed the rice. “Well, its sweet and good,” a woman was quoted as saying by Kantipur (28 June) after she cooked and ate the rice. She expressed her dissatisfaction over official decision to dump the rice even as people are hungry.
