The Principal Secretary of State Welfare Department Bihar, Vijay Prakash, has come up with a new idea to encourage low caste poor people to cope with food shortages – rat meat. He said he was advancing his proposal after “much survey and ground work”. Bihar’s extremely poor Mushar community are rat-eaters by tradition. The Mushar are on the bottom strata of the caste system with the lowest literacy rate and per capita income. Less than one percent of their 2.3 million population in Bihar is literate and 98% are landless.
Mr Prakash says his proposals to popularise rat meat eating are intended to uplift their social-economic condition. “There are twin advantages of this proposal. First, we can save about half of our food grain stocks by catching and eating rats and secondly we can improve the economic condition of the Mushar community,” he reportedly said. According to Mr Prakash, about 50% of total food grain stocks in the country are eaten away by rodents. He argues that by promoting rat eating more grain will be preserved while hunger among the Mushar community will be reduced.
Mr. Prakash is known for advancing ever newer, ‘innovative’ plans. Earlier, he proposed to recruit eunuchs as security guards to maternity wards in hospitals. His another plan is to encourage snake catching. “I’ll make snake catching popular for the economic value of its venom,” he said.