OPEN FORUM
New
Delhi, 26 June 2009
Food Security Law
MATURED STRATEGY IMPERATIVE
By Dhurjati Mukherjee
Will
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh be able to deliver what his party chief, Sonia
Gandhi is asking for? Last week Sonia has asked him to fulfil the Congress’
poll commitment: bringing a law to ensure food security to all, especially the
BPL families, who would be given foodgrains at Rs 3 per kg. The draft bill “Right
to Food (Guarantee of Safety and Security) Act” proposes freedom from hunger
and malnutrition as a fundamental right. Well-meaning alright, but can India achieve the
goal? “”
Well, more than 850 million people worldwide suffer from
hunger, 820 million of them in developing countries. That there are nearly a
billion hungry people in the world today notwithstanding the gains made in
agricultural productivity is startling. Since the past decade, attempts have
been made to reduce by half the number of hungry people in the world by 2015,
specially enunciated in the Millennium Development Goals. However, it is
becoming clear that the goal will be very difficult to meet – the estimated
number of undernourished has risen from 708 million to 2000 to over 852 million
presently.
Widespread hunger undermines the development potential of
nations and has far-reaching effects in society. An FAO study of developing
countries over 30 years found that if nations with high rates of
undernourishment had increased food intake to an adequate level, their economic
output or GSP would have increased by 45%. Losses in labour productivity due to
hunger are well known to cause reductions of 6 to 10% in per capita GDP and
this has been reiterated by a UN Task Force on Hunger.
India may be the second fastest growing
economy in the world, but it has a long way to go in eradicating hunger. Among 118 countries, it is 94th in
the Global Hunger Index prepared by the International Food Policy Research
Institute (IFPRI). Though the country has improved its score lately, it is
still lagging behind China
and many other less developed countries.
In a country where 834 million people have per capita daily
consumption of Rs 20 or less (as per the Report of the National Commission for
Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector), hunger still remains one of the major
challenges. High growth rate of GDP and the increase in the number of
billionaires and millionaires is meaningless for the country unless this
important issue in addressed effectively. In fact, India’s high growth of 9 per cent
has bypassed 77 per cent of the population!
The IFPRI measured the Global Hunger Index based on three
indicators: One, proportion of undernourished as a percentage of the population
(reflecting the share of population with insufficient dietary energy intake);
two, prevalence of under weightiness in children under five years (indicating
the proportion of children suffering from weight loss and/or reduced growth);
and lastly, under five mortality rate (partially reflecting the fatal synergy
between inadequate dietary intake and unhealthy environment).
The problem in India has basically two broad
aspects: more attention and resources for child health and nutrition, and two, ensuring
sufficient income for the rural poor, specially farmers and labourers, so that
they are assured two square meals a day. One cannot deny that the farm sector
needs more attention and this has been well-enumerated in the National Policy
for Farmers, which called for a paradigm shift from commodity-centred to a
human-centred approach in agricultural planning and programmes. But not much has
been done except for the debt waiver to farmers because of the predominantly
urban bias in Indian planning.
Thus, making available food for the hungry millions is no
doubt a big challenge. More so, as food
prices have increased in recent times, the income levels of the poor and the
backward sections have not. The rural poor are in major crisis and this could
be attributed to increasing suicides, on the one hand, and unrest and violence
among the neglected specially the adivasis and the dalits. This is in sharp
contrast to the increasing levels of income of the middle-income sections and
also the lower-income groups.
While experiments in effecting improvements in the
productivity of rice, wheat and the general range of commercial crops is
welcome, there is also need to ensure an increase in yields of pulses as the latter is a
significant source of protein essential for human existence. In 1950-51, the production of pulses was 8.41
million tonnes and in 2006-07 it was 14.23 million tonnes – the rise in output
being less than 60 per cent. In fact, the production of pulses was already
10.62 million tonnes in 1953-54. This clearly reveals that while consumption
went up, not much attention was given to production, which failed to keep pace
with the increasing demand. Similarly, wheat production has also remained
somewhat static.
The poor do not have the capacity to buy protein-rich food
(like milk, fish, meat egg etc.) and with prices of pulses reaching ridiculous heights,
these have become beyond their reach. Instead, they take as substitute a
species of vetch, lathyrus salvis, widely known in the countryside as khesari,
which gives some protein. But scientific reports reveal that over a period of
time, the consumption of vetch leads to a form of permanent paralysis. This
apart, lack of nutritious food has led to the incidence of diseases such as TB,
cholera, jaundice etc. as the poor do not have the immune power to fight the
bacteria.
Recent reports however, indicate that scientists have
developed rice that is richer in iron. Hari Krishnan of the University of Missouri,
US and P. Sukumar of Tamil Nadu Agricultural
University, Coimbatore crossed a normal variety of rice
Oryza salva with a wild one Oryza nivara to produce another variety that is
superior to both. The rice not only cooks well but has an average protein
content of around 12%. As a whopping 3.5 billion people in the developing
countries lack enough iron in their diets, this rice could be a suitable
substitute. But when and whether this variety of rice would be available to the
poor at affordable prices remains to be seen.
Clearly, there has to be a strategy to increase production
of essential food items through better and innovative agricultural practices.
The scarcity of water, the increase in floods and droughts and the
pest-resistant techniques would need to be kept in mind while evolving a
time-bound action plan. Also, the oft-repeated jargon of lab-to-land approach
has to be implemented in letter and spirit. If necessary, measures may be taken
for cooperative farming under control of panchayats to get more yields that
could help small and marginal farmers to get more production and enhance their
purchasing power. It has also to be ensured that soil degradation is
effectively met and there is more attention on dryland farming with water
availability steadily declining.
Combating hunger and malnutrition is no doubt a critical
challenge for the country. Greater all-round efforts on all fronts are needed. The
UPA government has a challenge to provide food to the hungry millions. If it
doesn’t, there is bound to be more violence and social tension in society.
---INFA
(Copyright, India
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