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Dr. Norman Borlang- not exactly a familiar name for our generation- but that doesn’t diminish his stature as a dedicated humanitarian.

Friends, he passed away recently at the ripe age of 95, a fulfilled life and it was in death that his achievements came to light for us.

He was a modern day messiah who worked tirelessly to feed the hungry millions of the developing world including our country. The early to mid 1960’s saw acute food shortages in the country both due to manmade and natural causes. The then government sought help from the USA and the Rockefeller and the ford foundation came forward to help. They had successfully demonstrated new agricultural techniques since 1944 in Mexico and the results were astounding.

Dr. Borlang came to India in 1965 and a new chapter in our agricultural history began. He taught Indian farmers to experiment with the wheat crop and very soon the production reached an exorbitant level.

Dr. Borlang received the Nobel peace prize in 1970 for agriculture, the only one so far and warned the world in his acceptance speech that the war against hunger needed a lot more to be done. Out of his Nobel Prize money he funded the world food prize and our very own dr. V.Kurien of Amul fame was one of the early recipients.

As students living in a world where the discrepancies between the have and have nots is widening day by day, hunger is a crisis that needs to be dealt with immediately. One one hand we have the upper middle- high class that has a tremendous purchasing power and a lofty standard of living which translates into eating out quite a few times a month besides frequent home deliveries etc. While on the other we have a staggering population of hungry persons who don’t know if a square meal would be available to them at the end of the day. Within our reach, it is our duty to do what can be done for such people living in the same metropolis as we do. For example the next time you drop into Mc. Donald’s along with whatever you order for yourself, buy an extra burger and give it to the little malnourished kid who stands and begs outside your regular haunt. Or maybe you can set aside a limited amount each month to donate to some charitable institution that feeds hungry homeless people.

Not much, but these things can go onto make a lot of differences without making you go out of your way.

Food for thought shall I say?