High economic growth fails to tackle hunger

After all, India is no Bangladesh or Ethiopia. India is a nation that can now fund its own development needs, has a defence budget of $ 31.5 billion, that runs a substantial foreign aid programme of its own and that it is one of only six nations with satellite launch capability.

Is not it ironical that India with its high ambitions to become a global power, a major country in South Asia which also happens to be a region that is home to more chronically food insecure people than any other region in the world, home to the largest number of hungry people?

But the land of paradoxes that India is, it is already a public scandal that India has no money, or so it turns out to be, to feed its hungry and that is home to 450 million poor. Our low ranking in the Global Hunger Index is despite the public distribution system (PDS) being in place, a scheme that caters to 65 million families below the poverty line and 115 million other families above the poverty line, and is supposed to act as a safety net for the vulnerable sections of our society.

It is quite evident already, due more to the findings of the World Food Programme and the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) that the high economic growth rates have failed to improve food security in India leaving the country facing a crisis in its rural economy.

The irony could be even starker if one compares the debate in Britain with the one that is raging in India — the one between the National Advisory Council (NAC) — that pitches for near-universal coverage of food security for the poor that it wants to be delivered through the old rickety PDS — and the Rangarajan Committee, (set up to review the NAC recommendations) seeking to scale it down on the grounds that the subsidy required to procure so much grain would be unaffordable to make it viable.

And there’s truth in it. It has been estimated by the ministry of food and public distribution that the total food subsidy bill will balloon to a whopping Rs 1,10,600 crore if entitlements recommended by the NAC are incorporated into the Food Security Bill. The subsidy bill in the initial phase will be around Rs 93,000 crore.

The ramifications could have serious implications on our economy already hamstrung by high government expenditure, unsustainable subsidies and steep interest payments. Rising food prices as a result of a demand-supply mismatch have gone on unabated, agriculture growth has been poor added with our wobbly PDS chains.

Under-nourishment

Wholesale food inflation has further spiked the prospect for India of meeting the Millennium Development Goals for food security by 2015. It demands very serious scrutiny why despite some of the important food-based interventions like the PDS, the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), and the Mid Day Meal Scheme (MDMS), India has about half the world’s under-nourished children.

If one leaves aside the cases of multiple bunglings and draws upon again on Britain’s ethical dilly-dallying on whether India is really money-deficient when it comes to pay the poor, it helps to bear in mind that India can afford to embezzle Rs 60,000 crore in the spectrum scam, can spend a princely sum of Rs 40,000 crore or more for the Commonwealth Games, draw Rs 10,000 crore on a new airport from the exchequer, not to speak of tax write-offs running into many more crores of rupees. We talk of ‘exportable surpluses’ while an unconscionable amount of foodgrains rot and people starve.

Still, once the Food Security Bill comes to be enacted, it will certainly become the most important step taken since 1947 in addressing poverty-induced endemic hunger in India. But comprehensive food security is not possible without a social safety net in place and innovative agriculture production programmes and without propping up mechanisms to ensure that food is available in the market. Besides, the targeted population has to have adequate purchasing power to gain access to food.

Overdependence on a leaky PDS — instances of targeted beneficiaries not getting their entitlements making ‘exclusion’ errors widespread — as a matter of government policy has failed to address the problem of food security in our country because food security should ideally involve physical, economic and social access to a balanced diet, safe drinking water, environmental hygiene and primary health care.

On the eve of the Twelfth Plan (2012-17), it is important as well, as some scholars have rightly point out, to address the ‘non-tangible dimensions of deprivation,’ such as disadvantage, vulnerability, powerlessness, exploitation, marginalisation and alienation that generate and perpetuate poverty for certain sections of society irrespective of the accelerated growth and levels of development.