Feast Limits Relaxed

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31597, 7 February 1968, Page 3

Feast Limits Relaxed

(N.Z.P.A.‘Reuter —Copyright)

NEW DELHI, February 6.

Big wedding and funeral feasts will be permitted in India by an official order —indicating that the country’s food shortage is easing.

Austerity measures imposed during the two-year drought and famine which finally broke with the 1967 monsoon have been eased.

After a good food-grains harvest—expected to reach a record 95 million tons with the harvesting of the spring crops—the Cabinet has approved a revised guest control order, which the States are strongly recommended to adopt. The order allows 50 people to be invited to a function other than a marriage or funeral, compared with 25 previously. For marriages and funerals, the permitted maximum number of guests has been raised from 100 to 150. Guests will also be allowed to eat more, although the host will still have to overcome the rationing of cereals, rice and sugar, which will remain in force in the large cities to check any rush to give lavish parties. Hotels and restaurants will be allowed to increase the number of courses at sit-down and buffet-style meals from three to four. Only one cereal preparation will be allowed, however.

Days without rice and cereals will continue in hotels and restaurants. Under the “save food cam paign”, restaurants are forbidden to serve cereals on Monday, and many also cross rice off their menu one day a week.

The austerity measures took many directions as the Government sought to deter Indian hosts from serving sumptuous meals while millions of their countrymen went hungry every day. But the guest control order

previously in force went against the grain of hospitable Indians, for whom serving a frugal meal is considered a disgrace. The move to discredit food extravagance began .in 1965, after an impromptu suggestion by the then Prime Minister (Mr Lal Bahadur Shastri) that people should miss a meal on Mondays to help avert an approaching food crisis. It was primarily the marriage festival which mads food officials frown. With his daughter’s marriage a matter of prestige, a man would organise pomp, eating and drinking as far above his social standing as he dared on his limited budget—and, all too often, beyond it. Large quantities of wheat preparations and rice normally go to waste at wedding ceremonies.

Stuck Zips.—lf you grease a sticking zip' with a little cold cream it should slide freely again.