KEY TRENDS
• Average calorie intake per diem in rural area India has declined from 2309 kcal in 1983 to 2011 kcal in 1998*
• Per capita yearly net availability of foodgrains has declined from 199.0 kg during 1897-1902 to 141.50 kg in 2002-03*
• The period of 1990s has seen significant curtailment of purchasing power resulting in rising food stocks in FCI (Food Corporation of India) godowns*
• About half the preschool children in Asia are considered to be malnourished**
• Micronutrient deficiencies have resulted in vitamin A deficiency (VAD), iron deficiency, usually assessed as anemia, and iodine deficiency disorders (IDDs)**
• The prevalence of anaemia in adolescent girls is 72.6% in India***
• After registering impressive gains between 1990–92 and the mid-1990s, progress in reducing hunger in India has stalled since about 1995–97*#
• The proportion of population consuming less than 1890 kcal/cu/diem has in fact increased in the states of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, West Bengal, Rajasthan and marginally for Punjab##
*Patnaik, Utsa (2003): Agrarian Crisis and Distress in Rural India, Macroscan
** Mason, John, Hunt, Joseph, Parker, David and Jonsson, Urban (1999): Investing in Child Nutrition in Asia, Asian Development Review, Vol. 17, nos. 1,2, pp. 1-32
*** 11th Five Year Plan, Planning Commission, Government of India
*# FAO Report-The State of Food Insecurity in the World-2008
## Report on the State of Food Insecurity in Rural India (2009), which has been prepared by the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) and the World Food Programme (WFP)
OVERVIEW
Liberalisation has brought handsome gains for India’s middle classes. Life is good and getting better; more and more people are holidaying abroad; buying of vehicles or property has never been easier. Slimming and low calorie diets are a rage. There has also been spectacular rise in social and economic inequalities but the per capita food availability and the calorie intake of the desperately poor people have both fallen since liberalisation. The situation has only worsened in the past two years with the prices of food grain, pulses and vegetables hitting the roof. India continues to be home to one third of the world’s underweight children.
Unlike the last centuries, the incidence of widespread hunger is unpardonable in today’s world, partly because of the global availability of food being a whole lot more than the mankind’s requirement, and partly because easy global connectivity has made it possible to address food emergencies very quickly. However, what has not changed through the ages is the lack of policies targeted specifically at eradicating hunger or at augmenting incomes at the lowest levels.
India is currently drafting a food security law which aims to fight hunger and extreme poverty. It seeks to make the families below the poverty line (BPL) entitled to 25 kg of wheat or rice at Rs 3 per kg. The law is clearly, and laudably, aimed at addressing hunger through policy intervention. In a way the right to life has always been meaningless in the absence of a right to food but then causing death through faulty state policies has never been a cognizable offence anywhere in the world. Maybe the time has come now to think on those lines.
