Lucknow:
Scores of wheat bags - sent by Central government for distribution in four districts with about a million and a half ration card holders - are rotting near a railway track in Etawah for the last one week.
Now it is barely fit for consumption by animals.
But even before this is distributed or thrown away, more railway wagons full of foodgrains are arriving. The scandal grows by the sackful.
The reason: Because There is not enough storage facilities. This means the latest foodstock arrivals too will go waste after being destroyed by the rain.
Despite the fact that this is the lowest rain that Uttar Pradesh has had for years, local officials claim they got far too much grain than what they can store and disburse.
And what has arrived from Punjab can't be given to people.
"We don't have room but forcefully, it continues to be sent from Haryana and Punjab," said J N Verma, Senior SP, FCI official, Etawah.
Barely 50 km away in the Maipuri district, officials have found an ingenious and scandalous way to get rid of rotten foodstocks - bury it. And the government even pays to bury the food.
"Officials have asked us to bury this grain. Till now, two truckloads of wheat have been disposed off in the fields," said Mahesh, an FCI labour.
"We received a complaint that wheat was buried. We came to inspect and have ordered an inquiry," said Jay Shankar Dubey, SDM, Mainpuri.
The irony is that the 50 million people below the poverty line in the state desperately need the food, but shockingly bad planning has meant dogs and rats will get it rather than human beings.
Uttar Pradesh is a state where almost half the children are underweight; one child in 10 under the age of 5 dies of hunger. Thus, to see food meant for these children being eaten by animals and pests is perhaps one of the saddest and most scandalous sights.
But will anyone be punished? Or will just another year go by with children dying of malnutrition and food meant for them is lost because of sheer bad governance and bad management?