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Social protection for food security by MS Swaminathan

Social protection has seen a sharp focus in the development policy agenda during the past decade. There is also a clear trend for making social protection, as well as food security, “rights-based”, rather than “discretionary”. Yet, no clear consensus has so far emerged concerning many basic design choices and implementation modalities. The Food Security Act 2011, which is now under the consideration of our parliament, is designed to achieve the end of poverty-induced chronic hunger in our country. Food security can be achieved only through concurrent attention to food availability, access and absorption. Thus, it needs synergy between food and non-food factors, including clean drinking water, sanitation, primary healthcare and the needed purchasing power.

In the past, social protection started with the family, where an economically or physically disabled member used to be taken care of by other family members. Gradually, the joint family system gave way to small families, mainly comprising the husband and wife. The absence of effective social protection measures at the family and community levels are one of the causes of suicides among farmers we observe in Vidarbha and elsewhere. Now that government is assuming responsibility for performing the duties that families and local communities used to undertake in the past, it is important to ensure that the social protection measures initiated by the government do not erode human dignity. Bread with dignity should be the motto for the social protection measures undertaken with public funds.

To be inclusive, social protection should begin with farm families on whom the responsibility for producing adequate quantities of food grains rest. To be effective, such social protection measures for farmers could take the form of a ‘Panchsheel’ for them. The five components of such a package are: Soil healthcare, water harvesting and efficient use, technology and inputs, credit and insurance, including old-age pension for farm women and men, and assured and remunerative marketing opportunities. A social protection umbrella based on the Panchsheel principle will help to rescue small and marginal farmers from poverty and hunger traps.

Access to food, irrespective of economic status is the major goal of the proposed Food Security Act 2011. Unfortunately, all the discussions surrounding this proposed law relate to eligibility criteria. Targeting aims to prevent the diversion of foodgrains to those who can afford to purchase them at market price. India is a vast country with diverse experiences. For example, Tamil Nadu operates a universal public distribution system (PDS) without any major implementation difficulty. Obviously a universal PDS will be successful only if it is based on the foundation of a culture of honesty. It may be useful to introduce a universal PDS in the 200 high-burden districts identified by the prime minister’s nutrition advisory council that suffer from severe malnutrition. This will help us to monitor the impact of this programme.

In the area of absorption of food in the body, there is need for paying greater attention to clean drinking water. The Rajiv Gandhi drinking water mission needs to be completed soon so that there will be drinking water security in all our villages. In the area of sanitation, the scope of the sanitation mission should be enlarged so as to cover every village and town. There is also need for spreading sanitation awareness, since only a combination of education, regulation and social mobilisation will help to spread environmental hygiene and sanitary toilets.

Social protection in relation to food security has both intra-generational and inter-generational dimensions. The intra-generational dimension will cover the needs for all children and adults on a life-cycle basis. The inter-generational social protection measures should include steps to overcome maternal and foetal undernutrition so that a new-born child has adequate birth weight (2.5 kg and above). Low birth weight children suffer from many disabilities in later life, including impaired cognitive abilities and diabetes.

Social protection measures should not only look at chronic and transient hunger, but also, hidden hunger caused by the deficiency of micronutrients like iron, iodine, zinc, vitamin A and vitamin B12, to name a few. In the field of transient hunger, it would be useful to promote the establishment of community grain banks based on local grains like nutri-millets. Such community grain banks can be operated by women self-help groups. The role of women in the management of household food security has been recognised th­rough the Food Security Act that has a provision to make women over 18 years, the custodians of a food entitlement card. Micronutrient deficiencies can be overcome both by leveraging agriculture for nutrition and by consumption of fortified common salt. Introduction of a nutrition dimension in the national horticulture mission will help provide horticultural remedies to ma­jor nutritional maladies.

An important cause of protein hunger in the diet of our people is the inadequate consumption of pulses, which often prove to be the major protein source in a vegetarian diet. The finance minister has provided funds in the Union budget of 2011-12 for setting up 60,000 pulses villages based on integrated attention to conservation, cultivation, consumption and commerce. This programme is being continued during 2012-13. The impact of such an end-to-end approach is evident from the fact that pulses production reached a level of 18 million tonnes during 2010-11, thus, breaking the era of stagnation in pulses production. Thus, there is hope for ending the protein hunger in our country.

(The writer is an agricultural scientist who led India’s green revolution)