Food Paradox of India: Hunger amidst Plenty

 Food Paradox of India: Hunger amidst Plenty

 We need sufficient level of energy and nutrition for our survival or to stay alive. This energy is in turn required for doing physical or mental work at home and workplaces. This energy comes from food, and keeps our body charged.

We can say food is the most important need of human beings which energises human body when consumed and keeps it fit and healthy. For any country, quantum of healthy citizen denotes its economic condition. As food is the basic and most important need of human being and comes directly from agricultural activities, we can say agriculture is the backbone of food sector.

Human body feels discomfort and De- energised in lack of food.  This stage is called Hunger. Hunger describes the feeling of discomfort that Is, the body’s signal that it is in need of more food. All people experience this feeling at times but, for most people, particularly in the developed world, this phenomenon is a fleeting event that is alleviated once the next meal is taken, causing no deep or permanent damage. When hunger or lack of food persists, however, the consequences can be devastating.

Position of India in Agriculture and Food Security:

Although India is an agricultural country and its 70 % population primarily depends on agriculture sector, still policymakers had not taken it as prime moving force(PMF) due to varied reasons. They preferred Industry as PMF keeping aside the agriculture. At that time Indian agriculture was dominated by feudal landlords and absentee landlordism. A large spread area of land was in control of only few hands and majority of people i.e. agricultural labourers, transport workers and other casual labourers were working as farmers under the control of landlords. Autocracy and partial treatment by rich landlords forced those farmers to live in scarcity of food and basic needs. That caused widespread unemployment, poverty and hunger. Thus Govt of India took a step in form of Agricultural reforms keeping a view to distribute excess land from landlords to landless labours for their livelihood and for employment. Still government failed to provide food at every level due to two severe droughts of 1965 and 1966 and wars with Pakistan and China. This forced India to imports for its food grain requirement for its citizen. Meanwhile Govt decided to reform its existing agricultural policy and go for a self-sufficient nation. Indian policy makers understood that increasing agricultural production would only help enhancing the food security of India along with achieving self-sufficiency. Green Revolution was one of the steps taken by government. During mid-1960 India adopted the green revolution with the introduction of High Yield Variety of Mexican dwarf wheat and miracle rice IR8, which lead to a remarkable growth in agricultural production. Green Revolution was adopted as a tool to reduce hunger and food shortage in India. 

Govt Initiatives for food security to minimise hunger:

Food security is ensured in a country only if,

(1) enough food is available for all the citizen

(2) all persons have the capacity to buy food of acceptable quality and

(3) there is no barrier on access to food.

Above depicts that for the success of food security in India, three terms i.e. availability, affordability & accessibility are the main concern. Indian Govt is trying to fulfill all needs as per these key factors.

Availability : We see above that in spite of agricultural background of our country, we were not able to produce ample quantity of food grains. The produce was not meeting with our consumption rate. Thus Government assisted producers of food grains financially and technically and taken the initiative for improved agriculture on scientific basis and to collect excess food grains at minimum support prise from the agricultural food grain producers. In this way government made available sufficient food grains for entire population of India along with without any loss to food grain producers by ensuring MSP for their produce.

Affordability: What is the mean of availability of food grains if they are not cheap or not suits the pocket of common people? Thus Government has made available these food grains at highly subsidized rates with different slabs according to purchasing power of the people i.e below poverty line & above poverty line in both rural as well as urban areas. This ensures affordability of food by weaker section of society.

Accessibility:

Now If food is available, it is affordable too, does it mean all people of Indian society are getting this? Perhaps not! India is a country of varied physical & economic features. Some of its parts are highly productive and some are not. Agricultural crops distribution is also vary according to soil, climate and relief features. Thus some states are producing high quantum of food grains and some have nil or minimum production. Government has taken the initiative to collect excess food grains from one state and its distribution to the areas of scarcity. Food Corporation of India is doing this job of collection and distribution of food grains for entire India. Central govt with the help of state govt has opened small shops in villages, towns, cities. These shops are called Ration Shop, where subsidized food grains are available for people of BPL, APL and others at differential rates. This work of collection, storage and distribution is done by FCI and entire network is known as PDS i.e Public Distribution System.  

With this instrument, Govt has ensured accessibility of food grains at every level of Indian society. It in turns has helped in minimising hunger and poverty in India.

Critical Analysis:

Although Indian government has done a commendable job in Green revolution, agricultural reforms, fixation of MSP & providing robust structure of PDS, there are still starvation deaths reported every year.  Despite high growth and self-sufficiency in food production over the years, a significant portion of our population still lacks food security and causing Hunger. This is due to:

(1) Over storage of food grains and their buffer stock maintained by FCI. This causes rotten food grains over a period of time. Food is also got wasted during distribution to PDS shops.

(2) Penetration of PDS is not proper. All sections of the society is not getting benefit of subsidised food grains due to corruption and maladministration

(3) Dependence on Monsoon or traditional harvesting factors.

(4) Identification of the section of BPL mere with wage calculations does not reveal the truth

Some Hunger Facts

1. Hunger remains the No.1 cause of death in the world. Aids, Cancer etc. follow.

2. There are 820 million chronically hungry people in the world.

3. 1/3rd of the world’s hungry live in India.

4. 836 million Indians survive on less than Rs. 20 (less than half-a-dollar) a day.

5. Over 20 crore Indians will sleep hungry tonight.

6. 10 million people die every year of chronic hunger and hunger-related diseases. Only eight percent are the victims of hunger caused by high-profile earthquakes, floods, droughts and wars.

7. India has 212 million undernourished people– only marginally below the 215 million estimated for 1990–92.

8. 99% of the 1000 Adivasi households from 40 villages in the two states, who comprised the total sample, experienced chronic hunger (unable to get two square meals, or at least one square meal and one poor/partial meal, on even one day in the week prior to the survey). Almost as many (24.1 per cent) had lived in conditions of semi-starvation during the previous month.

9. Over 7000 Indians die of hunger every day.

10. Over 25 lakh Indians die of hunger every year.

11. Despite substantial improvement in health since independence and a growth rate of 8 percent in recent years, under-nutrition remains a silent emergency in India, with almost 50 percent of Indian children underweight and more than 70 percent of the women and children with serious nutritional deficiencies as anemia.

12. The 1998– 99 Indian survey shows 57 percent of the children aged 0– 3 years to be either severely or moderately stunted and/or underweight.

13. During 2006– 2007, malnutrition contributed to seven million Indian children dying, nearly two million before the age of one.

14. 30% of new born are of low birth weight, 56% of married women are anaemic and 79% of children age 6-35 months are anaemic.

15. The number of hungry people in India is always more than the number of people below official poverty line (while around 37% of rural households were below the poverty line in 1993-94, 80% of households suffered under nutrition).