Raman Singh & the rice god

Chattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh does not suffer undue modesty when it comes to accepting the plaudits that are heaped on him for being the first state to enact the food security and nutrition Act. Singh, recently in Delhi to participate in a seminar that was organised specifically to celebrate him and the new law, related a story to demonstrate how people in his state viewed the food security law. Travelling in the interiors, he asked a man he met in a forest village who had provided him 35 kg of rice at Rs 2. Singh said the man replied: The rice is given by chawal wale baba (the rice god). Thus, said Singh triumphantly, the forest dweller did not know either the chief minister or anyone else in the administration but had paid the richest tribute to him and the scheme. What more praise can one get? he asked rhetorically. Too true, but Singh may want to hold the self-congratulation a bit, since many forest dwellers in Chattisgarh were forced to live in hiding or in camps for nearly a decade as a result of the armed conflict unleashed by Singh in the form of the government-sponsored Salwa Judum against the Naxalites.