The Poor's Food Insecurity in India (original) (raw)
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Food Security in India: A Paradigm Shift in Programmes
Ensuring Food security is one of the most challenging policy problems in a country such as India, where more than one-third of the population is poor and extremely malnourished. The attempts to ensure Food security in India started with productivist approaches and shifted to distribution and welfare approaches. Despite all the efforts, a large population is severely food insecure. This chapter explores and critically analyses the discourses and paradigm shifts in approaches to food security from a critical policy perspective. It critically examines the policies related to food production, food distribution and social welfare policies in India. The paper outlines the evolution of the agricultural and land reform policies, public distribution system (PDS), Integrated child development services (ICDS), Midday Meal (MDM), National rural employment guarantee act (NREGA) and National food security act (NFSA) to analyze their strengths and limitations in ensuring food security. The chapter concludes that the existing programmes can address the complexity of food security. However, the siloed approaches, lack of synergy and interdepartmental convergence in programmes limit their effectiveness. Therefore, a concerted effort toward convergence will be a step closer to ensuring food security for all.
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Food insecurity at the household level has become unacceptable in India where the economy is growing at high rates and food sufficiency is already achieved at the macro-level. Food security has always been an important issue in the Indian political economy and was addressed by numerous poverty-eradication and rural development programmes that emerged and evolved with time. In recent times of liberalization, the programmes are intended to be more targeted and integrated with other social objectives through innovative designing. In particular, the government is all set to using public works programme, which is nothing new to India or other developing countries, as a nationwide instrument to confer earning opportunity to rural people backed by legal reinforcement. This paper reviews the strategies and instruments in India that impinge on household food insecurity. The paper also examines how far the existing public works programmes in select four states target the households that are likely to be food insecure.
Food Security and Efficacy of the Intervention Mechanism in India
Rice and wheat are the two major foodgrains in India and their level of production determines the country self-sufficient. Forecasts on cereals supply range from 250 to over 300 million tones in the country by the year 2020. Mere availability of foodgrains is not a sufficient condition to ensure food security but also necessary that the poor have sufficient means to purchase food. Poor economic access leads to food security and it has been checked by the government mechanism through the operation of Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) and foodgrains are distributed at subsidized prices to the people living Below Poverty Line (BPL). It is a safety net to more than 330 million poor and those nutritionally at risk and an important delivery channel with a network of half million Fair Price Shops (FPS) catering to the needs of 199 million of ration cardholders. Food subsidy amounting to Rs. 25,800 (approximately US$ 5,730 million) was allotted during the period 2004-05, which rose...
Food Security System in India -Issues and Challenges
Souvenir, Proof Employees Union, Balasore, Odisha, 2016
Nature has provided enough opportunities to India in the form of good rainfall, favorable climate, fertile lands, big rivers and vast crop diversity for producing sufficient foods for its own people. After independence India has achieved self-sufficiency in food production by increasing its net production from 50.8 million tons in 1950-51 to 255.36 million tons in 2012-13 but most rural population still has to deal with the uncertainties of food availability on a daily basis. Food, being the first among many basic needs, ‘human right to food’ and ‘food security’ is recognized by United Nations as important factor for development of any nation. It is a matter of great concern that India is the home to the largest number of malnourished children in the world. The present paradox of high economic growth and slow reduction in the number of food insecure persons as well as inefficiencies of operations of various welfare scheme and entrepreneurial inabilities forced Indian government a paradigm shift in addressing the problem of food security from the current ‘welfare approach’ to ‘right to food based approach. Arrangement of food grains at subsidized rate in rural area under food security scheme will, no doubt, help to reduce migration from rural to urban areas. For avoiding any food insecurity, priority has to be assigned to agriculture and rural development along with promoting women empowerment, ensuring sustainable employment and improving environmental conditions like water, sanitation and hygiene. The National Food Security Act advocates PDS reforms following doorstep delivery of food grains, seamless connectivity, identification of beneficiaries using Aadhar card and introduction of schemes like cash transfers, food coupons, etc.
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Tij S Research Journal of Economics Business Studies Rjebs, 2011
Food security in India has to be understood as a distress phenomenon, as with marginal increase in their incomes over time they are forced to cut down on their food consumption to meet other pressing demands of health and education that were not considered important in the past. High economic growth rates have failed to improve food security in India leaving the country facing a crisis in its rural economy. If food security is a complex objective, pursued with others (shelter, safety, health, self-esteem), in a world where individual households face diverse, complex and different livelihood opportunities, what role can policy possibly play? Can governments ever know enough to act? This paper is focused on the several foods security issues prevalent in the Indian scenario. Data are taken from relevant sources to analyse the gravity of the food security issues in India. It also covered the several development programmes taken up by the Indian government to counter various food security issues including several schemes and yojanas.
THE URBAN POOR'S FOOD INSECURITY
This paper probes into the problem of food insecurity that the poor across the country are burdened with. Food-insecure people are those individuals whose food intake constantly falls below their minimum calorie (energy) requirements.
The world population is rising rapidly over the growth of food grains thus leading to food crisis. Access and distribution of food in order that people do not have enough and they die due to hunger and starvation. This problem continues even in the 21st century making Food Crisis one of the major global challenges. Various steps and measures are undertaken by countries to over this problem but their efforts to reduce hunger have remained inadequate. Some country programmes, in particular China and Brazil, have been successful through the progress they have achieved in providing access to food for their people and reducing poverty. in this people we will look at the Indian scenario w.r.t. food security as well as the steps taken by the government of India to obtain Food Security.
Some Reflections on Poverty, Hunger and Food Security in India
Rajasthan Economic Journal, 2014
At the Outset I would like to express my deep gratitude to the members of the Rajasthan Economic Association for so kindly electing me the President of the Association for the year 2012-2013 and honouring me with the opportunity to deliver the Presidential address. While selecting the topic for this conference I had two main considerations in mind: (i) the topic should be somewhat related to the subjects chosen for the discussion at the conference, and that (ii) it should be related to the most important problems challenging India’s present as well as future generations. I then decided to speak on Poverty, Hunger, and Food Security in India. I am conscious that many scholars have done considerable research in the area and some of them might be attending this conference also, I may not touch upon the serious research but I will try myself best to give some serious thought on these concepts and their relevance today. India was called the Golden Bird in the beginning of the 20th Century and attracted hordes of invaders from outside through ages. These invaders looted this territory and destroyed its economic structure completely. As a result the country of riches became a country of poor. When India became independent the biggest challenge for the Planners was to rebuild the country to match its past glorious history by careful planning and implementation of the appropriate developmental policies. Planners in India chose the Nehruvian Model in place of the Gandhian Model. The argument put forward was based on Kuznets thesis that growth will take care of the poverty and underdevelopment through the “Trickle Down” effect. In fact, our policy makers and planners chose a different path leaving the Gandhian village and agrarian economy based model of development and choose Russian Model based on development of basic and heavy industries for the country. As a result the agriculture was neglected causing wide spread poverty, inequality and unemployment in the country. In fact our policy makers were quite unaware of these problems in the country. One of the earliest ventures to highlight the issue of poverty was made by Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia. He wrote a pamphlet stating that a majority of the Indian population is extremely poor and lived on 3 annas a day. This gave rise to a debate and the Planning Commission set up a working group of economists and social workers to suggest the government about the nature and extent of poverty in India. The working group gave its recommendations in July, 1962 and suggested that at the national level the minimum expenditure per capita per month should be Rs. 20/- (at 1960-61 prices). Population below this expenditure level may be called poor. Planning Commission noted,“on the basis of the available data on distribution of population according to per capita expenditure nearly half the Indian population in 1960-61 was below this minimum level and they are poor.” There was a mention that this minimum was calculated on the basis of physical commodities but nothing more is said about it. All this awaked the interest of scholars in the study of the problem of poverty and a large number of scholars started studying poverty on their own.
India Policy Forum : [papers]. India Policy Forum. Conference, 2015
In September 2013, India passed a historic National Food Security Act. This paper examines the potential impact of the two central pillars of this act - expansion of the Public Distribution System and strengthening of the Integrated Child Development Schemes - on child nutrition. Using new data from the India Human Development Survey of 2011-12, this paper shows that access to subsidized grains via PDS is not related to improved child nutrition, and while ICDS seems to be related to lower child undernutrition, it has a limited reach in spite of the universalization of the program. The paper suggests that a tiered strategy in dealing with child undernutrition that starts with the identification of undernourished children and districts and follows through with different strategies for dealing with severe, acute malnutrition, followed by a focus on moderate malnutrition, could be more effective than the existing focus on cereal distribution rooted in the NFSA.