Poverty and Hunger
- UN’s Committee on World Food Security: all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life.
- 1996, World Food Summit: declared: “Food security at the individual, household, regional, national and global levels exists when people, at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”
- 1996, FAO: “Poverty eradication is essential to improve access to food”.
Pillars of Food Security:
Food security has four dimensions:
- Availability: Production within the country, food imports and the previous year’s stock stored in govt. Granaries.
- Accessibility: Within people’s reach. Amartya Sen(1980) added a new dimension to food security and emphasised the “access” to food through what he called the ‘entitlements‘ approach.
- Affordability: An individual has enough money to buy sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet dietary needs.
- Calamity or in other situations, shortage of food occurs; Prices rise causes
- Famine: When starvation leads to widespread deaths;
- Epidemics are caused by the forced use of contaminated water or decaying food and loss of body resistance due to weakening from starvation.
- Examples:
- FAMINE OF BENGAL, 1943 killed 30 Lakh people in the province of Bengal.
- The great Chinese Famine, of 1959-62 killed 3.6 Crore people(5% of the total population).
- Utilization: proper biological use of food, requiring a diet providing sufficient energy and essential nutrients, potable water, and adequate sanitation.
Malnutrition in India:
Currently, no person dies of hunger in India. However, our food security programs are overly skewed towards rice, wheat and sugar. They ignore the protein, vitamins, minerals and micronutrient deficiency. This affects the health of vulnerable populations, especially children.
Worrying Details from GHI reports:
In the 2024 Global Hunger Index (GHI), India ranks 105th out of 127 countries, with a score of 27.3, indicating a serious hunger situation.
The report highlights that 35.5% of Indian children under five are stunted, reflecting chronic undernutrition, and 18.7% suffer from wasting, the highest rate globally, indicating acute undernutrition. Additionally, 13.7% of India’s population is undernourished, signifying inadequate caloric intake.
These figures underscore the persistent challenges of malnutrition in India, despite economic growth, necessitating intensified efforts in nutritional interventions and food security.
Types of Current Hunger
Attainment of food security involves eliminating Current Hunger and reducing risks of future hunger. It has two dimensions:
- Chronic Hunger: Consequence of diets persistently inadequate in terms of quantity and/or quality.
- Reasons: Low income for a long time
- Seasonal Hunger: Seasonal unemployment.
- Prevalent in rural areas because of the seasonal nature of agricultural activities (related to the cycle of growing and harvesting) and in urban areas because of casual labour.
- In urban areas because of casual labour. Eg: there is less work for casual construction labour during the rainy season.
The percentage of seasonal and chronic hunger has declined in India since independence.
Food Insecurity in India
In India, food Insecure People are mostly landless people, traditional artisans, petty self-employed workers and destitute.
- Geographically: States of UP(eastern and South-eastern parts), Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, parts of MP and Maharashtra.
- Socially:
- The SCs, STs and some sections of OBCs who have either poor land base or very low land productivity are prone to food insecurity.
- A high incidence of malnutrition prevails among women. It puts even unborn babies at risk of malnutrition.
Poverty and Hunger in India
Food Security aims at self-sufficiency in Food grains. Indian policymakers adopted many measures that resulted in the ‘Green Revolution‘, especially in wheat and rice. This production is managed through India’s food security program via various means to ensure enough production for the people and address poverty and hunger, and maintain a sufficient buffer.
Structure of Indian Food Security Program:
It consists of Procurement Infrastructure, Buffer Stock and the Public Distribution System (PDS). We will read it in detail in the Agriculture book. Here’s the gist of the system.
Procurement and Buffer Stock
In India, The Food Corporation of India (FCI) purchases wheat and rice from farmers on a pre-announced Minimum support price(MSP) declared every year before the sowing season. This is stored in granaries and forms buffer stock for future utilization.
Presently, stocking norms comprise of:
- Operational stocks: for meeting monthly distributional requirements under TPDS and OWS. There is a four-month requirement under it.
- Buffer Stock: [technically Food security stocks/reserves]: Excess stock that piles up with distribution agencies. It is used for meeting the shortfall in procurement. The CCEA fixes the minimum buffer norms every quarter. The excess stock is exported from time to time.
Food Stock available in the central government’s pool is the stock held by:
- State Government Agencies (SGAs)
- States which are taking part in the Decentralised Procurement Scheme
- Food Corporation of India(FCI)
Public Distribution System (PDS):
The operational stocks are distributed to poorer people on Issue Price. There are about 4.8L ration shops or fair price shops in the country.
- Issue Price: These commodities are sold to people at lower prices than the market price.
- Central Issue Price (CIP) is the price at which grains are released to the Public under the PDS scheme. The Central government hands over the grains to the state governments at CIP, it has no further role in running the PDS system.
- National Food Security Act(NFSA), 2013: to provide for food and nutritional security in the human life cycle approach, by ensuring access to adequate quantity of quality food at affordable prices for people to live a life with dignity. [See Improvement in PDS]
Challenges to Food Security
This infrastructure overlooks several shortcomings of the present times.
- Climate change: climate change alters the pattern of monsoon and thus makes farmers vulnerable.
- Unsustainable use of land: SLASH AND BURN AGRICULTURE still practised in some pockets of India.
- Excessive use of fertilisers degrades the land.
- Excessive irrigation: water-guzzling crops are on more focus. It results in a high amount of salt collection on the surface of the land.
- Food wastage: Lack of proper infrastructure leads to food wastage
- Monoculture: monoculture is mainly responsible for half of the Indian women for anaemia, child stunting and wasting.
- Undernutrition: India has a 50% higher prevalence of undernutrition compared to the world average.
- Paradoxical situation: It is ironic that despite being a net exporter and food surplus country at the aggregate level, India has a 50% higher prevalence of undernutrition compared to the world average.
