How does India ensure that fewer people go hungry?

The simple answer to hunger is food security. But how do we ensure that?

To understand that, we need to understand what food security really means.

‘Food security emerges when all people at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.’ states the Food and Agriculture Organization or FAO - a body of the United Nations. Easier to define, very difficult to ensure.

Almost every country in the world has a food security problem to varying degrees. India being a massive and fast-growing economy obviously deals with this problem on a large scale.

To understand the gravity of the food security threat, let’s look at some Indian numbers.

• ?Around 195 million Indians are undernourished. That’s nearly 15% of the total population.
• ?43% of children in India are chronically undernourished. That’s almost half of the children in the country.
• ?On a scale of 0-100, 0 being no-hunger, India scored a severity scale of 25 putting our hunger level in the ‘serious’ bracket.

Is there a positive side?

Yes. While the above numbers are rather serious and threaten our food security, looking at a longer timeline reveals something positive. India has come a long way tackling this evil.

?For eg, undernourishment has gone down from 21.7% in 2004-06 to 14% in 2017-19. To achieve this kind of progress, the Government of India has long since been taking increasingly progressive measures. The effects of which will only compound.

Food security stands on three pillars - a consistent food supply, access to balanced nutrition, and food access for basic nutrition and care. But India doesn’t just feed its own.

India and China combined have almost half of the world’s wheat and rice stocks. Along with having to feed its own population of billions, India also plays a crucial role in global food security. And that is one of the root causes of the Indian food security dilemma.

So how does India manage this?

Once again, the answer is an ever-growing list of schemes & programmes, ingenious food policies and infrastructure development.

Ensuring equal and fair distribution of food

The Public Distribution System or PDS is the titular tool for maintaining home food security in the country. The main goal of PDS is to make sure necessary foods are distributed to all families in a fair and equal manner at a pricing reasonable across the social spectrum. This not only helps us attain self-sufficiency but helps keep food costs in check. The Public Distribution System hence is a crucial instrument for India to achieve its dual goals of equality and social justice. Digitisation of ration cards through Aadhar linkage has also seen an increase in targeted distribution.

Enabling agriculture with technology and commerce

While the PDS dates back to the British Era, ever since independence India has been taking big steps towards food security on its own accord with every five-year plan.

The National Horticultural Mission (NHM) is one such initiative. Pioneered by the National Horticulture Board that was established back in 1984, NHM aims to develop hi-tech commercial horticulture through identifying key regions, providing them infrastructure support throughout the production process and enabling them with technology to increase yield.

Similarly, the Department of Agriculture has implemented the Sub-mission on Agricultural Mechanisation or SMAM that constitutes Farm Machinery Training and Testing Institutes across four major Indian states. SMAM’s goal is to demonstrate and enable induction of new and technologically advanced equipment in farm fields.?

The Eleventh five-year plan saw a budget of INR 25,000 crores allotted to the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojna (RKVY) with the goal of a 4% growth rate in agriculture and related industries. Around 7 major states have benefitted from its diverse and customised technology packages so far.?

Empowering the economics of agriculture?

Another initiative in the Eleventh five-year plan was the National Food Security Mission aimed at increasing the production of rice, wheat and pulses by 10 million tonnes. The mission plans to achieve this through a multi-fold approach. Expansion of agricultural areas, enhancing productivity, while creating more job opportunities within the sector. The NFSM’s goal is not just to tackle food security as a threat but also to shift the market’s perspective towards agriculture as a thriving economy.

To go hand-in-hand with the NFSM, the Integrated Scheme of Oilseeds, Pulses, Oil Palm and Maize (ISOPOM) was introduced in 2010. The scheme’s primary goal is crop diversification and it plans to achieve that through activities like breeder seed acquisition, founder seed production and distribution, and plant protection initiatives.

Building soil health and fertility

The post-green revolution period saw an acute growth in the consumption of fertilizers. This has had a negative impact on the growth rate of food production due to imbalanced usage.

To counter the effects of fertilizers, the Government of India launched the National Project on Management of Soil Health and Fertility with a singular goal of conserving soil by setting up laboratories for soil testing and fertilizer quality control, and promoting usage of integrated nutrient management.

Challenges to Food Security

Tackling food security isn’t just a matter of producing and distributing food. There are factors, sometimes out of the government’s control that have to be actively dealt with.

One such major challenge for India is climate change, which has left an unanticipated impact on the country’s grain production. Droughts & floods, irregular rains, higher temperatures are all the immediate effects of climate change that threatens food security.

While globalisation has opened up agricultural commerce, it is also the reason the country struggles with unstable pricing. High cultivation costs coupled with low remunerative prices for raw food become a direct hindrance to food security.

Similarly, crop diversification has also proved to be both a boon and bane. The rise in cultivation of medicinal plants, biofuel and high yield varieties like oil seeds have taken up land that was once used for food production, causing an imbalance threat to food security.

What’s the future like?

India is a massive and rapidly growing economy that has gone from a growth rate of 3% to 9% in just the last twenty years. While the urban sector has performed exceptionally well, high economic growth in the cities does not always guarantee higher living conditions. India is very well aware of this fact.

Plus, events like the pandemic, war in Ukraine and other geopolitical and fiscal episodes have had a direct impact on food prices. The world as well as India is going through a food price inflation.

Our food policies, international relations and how we tackle environmental and agricultural hazards will be instrumental in deciding what the future of food security looks like for India.