With billions in reserves (In 2001 India had a national stockpile of around 60 million tons of rice and wheat) and a robust economy India still suffers from a malnourishment epidemic and persistent hunger among many of its people. The United Nations' World Food Program claims that "nearly 50 percent of the world's hungry live in India, a low-income, food-deficit country. Around 35 percent of India's population is considered food-insecure, consuming less than 80 percent of minimum energy requirements."
What causes the persistence of food deprivation in the country? Either the food production and/or availability are failing the people (Food Security) or the people that are hungry cannot afford to the buy the food that is available (Financial Security).
If it can be argued that these are the root causes of hunger then a society that ensures all its people an adequate and steady income to meet their basic needs along with a steady and easy access to most essential commodities from a public distribution system, then hunger could possibly be eradicated. Essentially a system of "Social Security" that ensures financial security along with food security.
Food Security:
The Food Corporation of India set up a public distribution system (PDS) with objectives that seem to satisfy food security with the assumption that its citizens would be able to afford its subsidized prices. The main objectives of the Public Distribution are threefold: first, to provide food grains to the poor at affordable prices; second, to support farmers by purchasing food from them at reasonable prices; and third, to maintain national food security by holding stockpiles of food.
The effort has been earnest and prevented large scale famine in India over the past several decades. However, its primary objective of being "poor" driven has not fared well with the universality of the PDS coverage and the absence of targeting. Every household, irrespective of its income, can have an entitlement card and draw food grains against it. The flaw in this mechanism is obvious; there is no commitment towards the poor. There is a larger drain on the stockpiles at the warehouses and at the local fair price shops. Unavailability and low quality of remaining supplies is a common problem at the retail sites. With a "poor" centric approach more resources could be diverted to improve the distribution and access to the economically driven regions. With a smaller pool of consumers, the efficacy of the system could also improve dramatically.
On its secondary goal of supporting farmers the PDS is only partly successful. The market driven and irrigation centered agricultural policies at the time of its formulation have the system only providing its beneficiaries with wheat and rice and four essential commodities (sugar, edible oil, soft coke and kerosene oil). The system then alienates not just non-cereal growers but also those that cultivate other cereals.
The Public distribution has been criticized for various other inadequacies such as the cost, distribution, management etc that are not being discussed here.
Financial Security:
The government recently began implementing the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The NREGA provides a legal guarantee for one hundred days of employment in every financial year to adult members of any rural household willing to do unskilled manual work at the statutory minimum wage. It is an ambitious and expensive scheme. Also without getting to the root causes of financial insufficiency and dealing with it, the system could become overburdened and unsustainable. In the articles I referenced for this piece, there seems to be a lot of debate regarding the cause of poverty, which eventually leads to hunger, with little consensus. It also remains to be seen if the minimum wage would be sufficient for the basic shelter and food needs. There needs to be a combined impetus towards training unskilled workers with skills that can be better utilized in the Indian marketplace. It is however a step towards ensuring financial security for the poor.
It seems that India might actually have the answer to its hunger problem in its public distribution system and NREGA. If these two grand schemes can work in tandem and in a more poor centric way, the hungry might get to be fed.
(References for this essay included articles and papers by Amartya Sen, Vandana Shiva, reports from UN's "World Food Program", articles published by "Global Policy Forum" and "Reducing Poverty and Hunger in India: The Role of Agriculture" IFPRI 2004-2005 Annual Report Essay)
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