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Towards Hunger Free India - Media Coverage

25 April 2001, Times of India, New Delhi, India

PM sets 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 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.

LURKING FOOD INSECURITY

According to Food Insecurity Atlas

· Punjab and Haryana top food availability security but are thumbs down on sustainability criteria. Could become food insecure.

· In Gujarat production is low but has a reasonable position on purchasing power and absorption.

· West Bengal and Assam, relatively food secure in terms of availability.

· Tamil Nadu, though good in food availability and absorption, is poor in food access.

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.

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