Moon Shots and Monsoons: A Modest Proposal for Food Security

Welcome to the Green Light Dhaba. Today, we're talking about food security. It is widely accepted that climate change is likely to adversely affect our summer monsoon. In fact, it's probably happening already; even before this year's drought, scientists at IIT Delhi were warning that our summer monsoon has been weakening in recent years. And just last month, the director of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology said the continued melting of Greenland's ice could lead to a drastic reduction in the power of our future monsoons.

We all know drought affects farmers and the food we eat. Fortunately, if you've been worried about the state of our nation's food supplies, you need worry no more: our illustrious PM recently declared, "We are in a very strong position to manage the consequence of drought. Our food stocks in particular are very high.”

I, for one, am relieved. But we cannot be too careful. As we move into a more uncertain future, we must ask whether these food stocks of ours are truly secure?

Of course many environmentalists have been arguing for more responsible water use, more sustainable, diverse, drought-resistant farming practices, etc. That's all very well and good. But I want to propose a more exciting idea. What we need, I think, is a solution that will increase food security, while at the same time showing just how powerful this great country is. I've been thinking a lot about this, and I have just the thing!

We need a godown on the moon!

A godown on the moon would clearly demonstrate India's power to the world, while at the same time keeping our food safe from pests and terrorists. That's right, we can put our surplus-- our wheat, rice, and pulses-- up on the moon in an all-desi storage facility, where nobody can mess with it! The fact that it will be vacuum-sealed is just the frosting on the cake, as they say.

Now, to those of you who say this Hari Batti guy is obviously just a third-rate joker, I say, my proposal is completely reasonable in the context of the goals of our current space program! Some may raise the sad fate of our own moon probe, Chandrayan I. Yes, stories propagated by the Chinese news agency Xinhua did suggest the mission was a "failure." Yet our own former President APJ Abdul Kalam joined the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in labeling the mission a "great success". If that's not enough proof, it has been widely reported that the American astronaut Edward Michael "Mike" Fincke, recently said the same thing!

Let the Chinese say what they will. I, for one, say we should move full speed ahead with our moon program. It was just this May that the Chairman of the IRSO, Dr. G. Madhavan Nair said that "the Indian space mission’s next dream is to set up a base station on the moon." A godown on the moon is obviously just "one small step" beyond that.

A few bleeding hearts among you will say that we should feed the poor and address climate change before we go to the moon. In fact, Gil Scott-Heron said something like that forty years ago, in "Whitey on the Moon". He makes a point; in fact it is true that space programs all over the world take a HUGE amount of money that could be going to feed and house poor people. Our own space program already costs a billion US dollars a year, and that's to say nothing of what it would cost to build a base on the moon.

We have many problems: unstable and sometimes hostile neighbors, failing monsoons, hungry farmers, to name a few. But most of these problems could be lessened if we just stored our FOOD on the moon. In time, we might even be able to divert water from the Yamana (or the Himalayan glaciers, which are melting anyway) up to the moon and then we could save food transportation costs by GROWING the food on the moon. All we need is need is a little bit of faith in our technolgy and leadership!!

Thanks for stopping by the Green Light Dhaba. While you're here, tell us what you think about the Indian space program, the drought, and what can be done to make sure there's enough food to go around.

Here's he menu for the rest of the week:

Thursday: GDP, justice, and "the rate of living": economics explained to a nine year old.

Saturday: We're normally closed Saturday, but if we feel like working a long week, we may serve up some dirt on SRK.

Hope to see you soon. If you like what you see here, help spread the word.