When taxpayers shell out crores for monkey-meal schemes

The UPA-II regime has created the right to food law, to supply heavily subsidised food grain to the majority of India’s population. The Bill was debated extensively in Parliament and outside, but passed without a murmur, because no politician worth his salt could deny the right of the poor to get a full meal at low, or no, cost.

Now, Delhi’s pampered monkeys are having their say — and their bananas, too. And it’s costing the taxpayer a bomb. In one sanctuary only in Asola, on the outskirts of the Capital, over 16,000 monkeys are fed everyday, with their meals funded from the state budget. A few years ago, these simian meals used to cost a hefty Rs 1 crore every year. Today, the cost of feeding monkeys sets taxpayers back by Rs 3 crore a year.

The monkeys probably don’t give a hoot about food inflation, but someone in government should have asked whether so many taxpayer rupees should be spent to feed monkeys, in a country where many people go without a full meal for days. And when this monkey-meal scheme was finally unearthed, it emerged that there was no clear process for allocating and spending the monkey money.

All of which goes to prove that feeding monkeys costs a lot more than peanuts. But this realisation can’t really pull the plug on this particular piece of monkey business, either. Well-fed simians are better than hungry ones.