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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

805 million people go hungry. Who will uphold their right to food? -Biraj Patnaik
-The Guardian

Countries are recognising their obligation to feed their citizens, but with growing corporate control over food systems, the battle is far from over

As the first round of intergovernmental negotiations on the sustainable development goals gets under way in New York, I am reminded of the immense struggle over time to ensure that every human being has quality food in sufficient quantity to meet their needs - a right laid out by Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights back in 1948.

Despite the growing global acceptance of an individual's right to adequate food and nutrition, and the obligation of the state to ensure that all its citizens are free from hunger, 805 million people around the world today are still chronically malnourished.

There has been progress. In 1996, countries set out a clear target to eradicate hunger at the World Food Summit and in 2004, the 162 member states of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation adopted voluntary guidelines "to support the progressive realisation of the right to adequate food".

Among those nations, Brazil led the way. President Lula's ambitious Zero Hunger programme helped to establish the right to food as a constitutional right in 2010. Nicaragua, Bolivia and Ecuador were also at the forefront of legislating the right to food with similar laws and constitutional amendments. Across Latin America, change came out of successful campaigns led mostly by peasant farmers.

In India, however, it was the supreme court that pronounced the right to food as an integral part of the right to life. The right to food case and the efforts of the right to food campaign vocalised a consensus held among Indians that the second-fastest growing economy in the world could not continue to have the largest number of hungry people and malnourished children in the world.

The battle in the courts and the struggle on the streets led to the passage of the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in 2013, which has expanded the public distribution system of food grains to cover more than 820 million people. The NFSA can also be credited with creating universal maternity entitlements and a free meal for all pregnant and nursing mothers, universal and free school meals, and free meals for children under the age of six.

But the NFSA is not perfect; far from it. It does not, for instance, provide any relief to subsistence farmers in a country that has seen scores of farmers commit suicide because of the agrarian distress between 1996 and 2013. Nor does it deal with the crucial issues of land reform or strengthening rural livelihoods.

Malnutrition is also unlikely to be significantly reduced unless India tackles the lack of water and sanitation, and quality health care, which are equally critical social determinants for eliminating malnutrition. Still, at the very least what the NFSA is expected to achieve is a significant reduction in hunger and that in itself would be a substantial accomplishment.

Globally, as in India, the challenge to the right to food is considerable. The most significant barrier to change is the inability of governments to fix the global food system as a whole and address the issue of growing corporate control over food systems. We must also develop more sustainable and agro-ecological ways of production that simultaneously mitigate the impact of climate change and benefit smallholder farmers who produce close to 70% of the world's food.

The corporate control over food, and the consequent proliferation of low-quality junk food promoted by supermarkets, is widely acknowledged to be a large contributor to the global obesity epidemic - another and often under-appreciated aspect of malnutrition.

So as governments begin diplomatic wrangling, I ask myself: will we meet the zero hunger challenge over the next 15 years of the sustainable development goals? Despite my optimism, the jury is still out.

Biraj Patnaik is the principal adviser to the commissioners of the supreme court of India on the right to food case.