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Towards Hunger
Free India - Media Coverage
25 April 2001, Times of India, New
Delhi, India
PM sets 2007 deadline for
hunger-free India
The Times of India News Service
NEW DELHI: Acknowledging a system's failure in meeting
food security needs, Prime Minister Vajpayee had one deadline to set and one
specific idea to offer - making the country "substantially'' hunger-free
by 2007 and activating mass-feeding programmes by religious and social
institutions on a far wider scale.
Such programmes, by institutions of all communities, were particularly useful
during natural calamities and the government would support them any way it
could, he assured a gathering of scientists, bureaucrats and diplomats here
on Tuesday evening.
The occasion: The inaugural session of a consultation on `Towards Hunger-Free
India', organised by the Planning Commission, the UN's World Food Programme
and the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation. The PM also released two
publications, the Food Insecurity Atlas of Rural India and Enabling
Development: Food Assistance in South Asia.
The statistics say it all: 268 million people are still considered
food-insecure in India, almost half the women in the age group of 15-49 and
three-fourths of the children are anaemic.
And, we say we are surplus in food stocks. "A hungry stomach,'' said
Vajpayee, "questions and censures the system's failure to meet what is a
basic biological need of every human being.''
He could not escape mention of the paradox bedevilling one
and all: the need to increase food production at a time when there are
surplus stocks and substantial quantitites of food being wasted because not
enough attention has been paid to storage, preservation, processing and
proper distribution.
When regional and seasonal fluctuations, purchasing power
fluctuations and natural calamities hamper efforts towards year-round food
security at the household level.
Daunted by the high costs of managing food stocks, the PM said there is a
need to better target the Centre's food subsidy, now Rs 13,000 crore. And,
put his seal of approval on the latest plan to decentralise buying and
distribution of food.
Hoping this would help reach more people, Vajpayee urged states to plug the
administrative deficiencies in the public distribution scheme, especially in
the poorer north and north-eastern states. He promised to examine whether
surplus stocks could be used to promote female literacy programmes and
attendance in schools.
Planning Commission deputy chairman K C Pant, suggesting the food procurement
policy itself was becoming a vehicle for supporting high prices of
foodgrains, saw ominous implications in the slowing pace of employment
creation in agriculture and slippage in the productivity ladder in most
products.
What will be needed is increased investment in agriculture, a gradual shift
in the geographical pattern of production and management of the all-important
land and water issues. Since nutrition and food security are linked to the
whole development process, the Commission is, on the PM's instructions,
examining the feasibility of doubling per capita incomes in the country over
the next 10 years.
Make women the key players, advised WFP's deputy executive director Namanga
Ngongi. They are the main "nutritional caretakers'' for a family and
poor nutritional status of girls and women can result in an inter-generation
cycle of malnutrition.
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