Is this not a strange paradox? At a time when the Agriculture Ministry recorded an all-time high of 72 million tons of wheat, the World Bank poverty update points out a grim scenario: In absolute terms, the number of those below the poverty line shows a significant increase in the post-reform era.

And while the government planned to export the "surplus" and "unmanageable" wheat stocks, an American company, RiceX, entered into a joint collaboration with the multinational agri-business giant, Monsanto, to produce and test its patented technology for nutritious food, treating Indians like guinea pigs.

In three to five years, if the tests prove successful, rice bran conversion into a nutritious food will yield a projected revenue of $400 million a year. That would be a welcome contrast to the company's $5-million loss last year. Company chairman Daniel McPeak has been reported as saying that the deal calls for RiceX and Monsanto to split the cost of sending two processing units, a container ship of rice grown in the United States and staff to India. RiceX employees will process both U.S. and Indian rice bran during a six-month test phase.

RiceX has developed a process to extract and stabilize nutritious rice bran from raw rice kernels. The company sees third world rice-growing countries as a fertile product market. And it has reasons to do so. After all, the number of hungry and malnourished in India alone has been steadily rising -in rural areas, from 224 million in the early 1990s to 250 million in the mid-1990s.

This corresponds to an almost constant increase in the incidence of rural poverty and a slow decline in the incidence of urban poverty, the World Bank report states. But, with successive governments abdicating their responsibility to feed the nation, and in a country where poverty and hunger have proved to be robustly sustainable, the emphasis has shifted to food exports. In other words, the policy initiative is to strengthen the national exchequer by depriving people of a basic human right - access to food.

In any other country, including the U.S., food exports are only allowed after the nation's food requirements have been adequately met. In the U.S., for instance, the government spends $45 billion to make available food to an estimated 25 million people languishing below the poverty line.

In India, on the other hand, food buffers are built essentially by keeping food away from the poor. With food prices continuously rising, and with the percentage of population earning less than a dollar a day keeping pace, more and more people are finding it difficult to meet their daily food needs. The res-ult is obvious: Foodgrain buffers continue to be comfortable and reassuring.

Buffer stock of wheat at the beginning of the procurement season was already four million tons in excess of the stipulated norm. And, with the expectation of an additional six million tons of production, the government allowed the golden grain to be exported.

Aware that international prices are not attractive following a good harvest globally, and given the fact that even countries like Bangladesh have stopped import of foodgrain, the trade is hoping to earn foreign exchange from exports to West Asia or Southeast Asian countries, where it is essentially consumed as cattle feed.

Aware of the contempt that the government, as well as the elite, hold for the poor, the monumental task of feeding and meeting the growing nutritional needs of the nation is being left to market forces. While the country is busy finding export markets for grain, even if it means selling it as cattle feed, Western companies are taking the reverse route - marketing cattle feed for human consumption in India.

The Monsanto-RiceX project will convert abundantly available rice bran, which is being used as low-grade animal feed, into a stable and nutritious food source for the Indians. Rice bran is the brown substance that is polished off brown rice during processing. But the bran interacts with enzymes that quickly cause it to spoil.

RiceX said it has found a stabilizing method to prevent it from spoiling, and to extract nutrients from the bran. The goal is to show that the process can extract a nutritious cooking oil from rice bran. If successful, the two companies could establish a commercial joint venture in India.

Monsanto is obviously excited at the prospects of converting a low-value resource like rice bran into nutritious human food. After all, what can you expect from private companies when the government itself fails to provide a healthy and nutritional diet for the nation?

Successive governments have imported inferior quality wheat, fit enough as animal feed, from Australia, Argentina and the U.S. Such is the paradox of plenty, that when there is a healthy growth in domestic foodgrain production, the government decides to allow exports.

Admittedly, reaching "surplus" food to the hungry millions will mean the subsidy allocation climbing up by a few thousand million. This should not evoke any protests. After all, no questions were asked when the government decided to incur an additional but unwarranted financial burden by revising salaries of government employees.