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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Govt must not ignore the food security of its people by Tina Edwin

Govt must not ignore the food security of its people by Tina Edwin

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published Published on Oct 12, 2010   modified Modified on Oct 12, 2010

Despite recording robust economic growth over the last couple of decades and spending thousands of crores of rupees on subsidising foodgrain and other programmes aimed at improving the nation’s social indicators, India ranks a low 67 among 84 countries on the Global Hunger Index, 2010. The country has actually dropped two levels since last year on the index published jointly by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide. Our neighbours Sri Lanka and Pakistan rank much higher. The index is based on three indicators: proportion of undernourished as a percentage of population, prevalence of underweight in children under five and the under-five mortality rate.

And, India’s record on these parameters is rather dismal. The country has over 230 million undernourished people, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization’s The State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2008. They constitute about 27% of world’s undernourished population. Worse, 43% of its children under the age of five are underweight. To put that in global perspective, they constitute 42% of the world’s underweight children, according to a 2009 Unicef report. This presents a scary situation for a country that hopes to be an economic superpower, reaping demographic dividend when rest of the world greys. Nearly half the child deaths in India are due to malnutrition.

This is rather ironical, if not tragic, for a country with abundant grain production and little storage capacity. More pertinently, it is telling of how pervasive malnutrition is in India, and the extent of food insecurity not just in rural areas but also in towns and cities.

Food security, as commonly understood, is not just about people having enough to eat. Handing out highly-subsidised rice and wheat to the poor alone will not ensure food security for the poor. The public distribution system (PDS) is more of a grain policy than a nutrition policy, notes IFPRI senior fellow Stuart Gillespie. Although, there is no doubt, subsidised grain does ensure that the poor can use their limited resources to buy vegetables and lentils and, thus, make their meals more nutritious.

Food insecurity can get acute in urban settings, particularly when prices spiral up, as the poor have limited purchasing power and there is no homegrown food to fall back on. With migration from rural to urban areas set to rise further, and most of it in an unplanned manner, the problem would only exacerbate in the years ahead if government response does not see a dramatic change. Making the situation worse is the appalling and unhygienic conditions in which the urban poor live, with limited access to safe drinking water and clean toilets — all of which tells on the health of the urban poor.

Policy failure in managing food security is all too apparent. It is not limited to mismanagement of food stock, poor forecasting of production and continuing with practices that keep yield low. Food security needs to be not just about availability of food, but accessibility and absorption. But the governments at the Centre and states are yet to address it as a holistic programme. Several government-funded schemes address individual aspects, but the gains will become visible in the country and its economy only if an integrated approach is adopted to address problems of availability, accessibility and absorption.

For that matter, the proposed Food Security Act may also limit itself to making available foodgrain at highly-subsidised rates to the poor and to nutrition-support schemes. What’s required of policymakers, a point that the father of India’s Green Revolution M S Swaminathan makes, is to create convergence between programmes for employment generation, improving living conditions, primary health, and mother and child welfare. Overhaul of central schemes would have been ideal, but all such proposals remain on paper despite promises by the NDAand the UPA governments.

Physical availability of food is not a problem in urban settings, given the existence of a widespread retail network, according to a report, State of Food Insecurity in Urban India, published recently by M S Swaminathan Research Foundation and World Food Programme. The report notes that access and absorption are the problem areas, a reflection of little improvement in nutritional intake and worsening livelihood insecurity despite overall economic growth.

Access can improve only with higher and regular incomes. In urban areas, that would mean expanding employment opportunities and ensuring better wages and decent working conditions for those in the unorganised and informal sectors. Skill development would play a critical role. Absorption can improve with easy availability of safe drinking water, toilet facilities inside one’s own premises, hygienic sanitation and drainage facilities for all urban areas, including slums, and nutrition education. Urban health facilities are important to minimising morbidity and, thereby, improving absorption, the report notes.

The global discourse on malnutrition has shifted from making available more food to addressing the problem with a package of interventions. The nation needs to do that too, even as it needs to address the problem of low intake of calories also. A significant proportion of the population does not taken in even 1,890 kilo calories per consumer unit per day (Kcal/Cu/diem) although 2,400 Kcal/Cu/diem defines the poverty line for rural areas and 2,100 for urban areas.

Expanding the PDS is considered one of the immediate measures required to address the nutrition needs of the poor, both in urban and rural areas. There is more or less a consensus that pulses too should be made available at the PDS shops. Mr Swaminathan suggests implementation of an urban employment guarantee programme on the lines of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme to improve food security for the urban poor.

The question is: do we need yet another government scheme with thousands of crores of rupees of allocation to address the problem especially when the central government pleads helplessness in getting states to effectively implement its programmes for food distribution? Or, will the people be better served if they are made more aware of their right to better working and living conditions, the need to eat better and demand efficient delivery of services promised by the government. The government cannot afford to ignore the food security of its people, especially the young if inclusive growth targets are to be achieved.


The Economic Times, 12 October, 2010, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/policy/Govt-must-not-ignore-the-food-security-of-its-people/articleshow/6733229.cms


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