Food insecurity in rural India has worsened since 1990s: UN
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Foodgrain-availability in rural India has fallen to 152 kg per capita, 23 kg less than in the 1990s, creating large-scale food insecurity in India’s villages. The poorest 30% of Indian households eat less than 1,700 kilo calories per day, per person, well below the international minimum standard of 2,100 kilo calories per day, even if they spend 70% of their income on food. These are some of the findings of United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler.
In his report ‘The Extent of Chronic Hunger and Malnutrition in India’, presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on September 22, Zeigler says falling agricultural wages, increasing landlessness and rising food prices have severely undermined the right to food in rural India. Ziegler’s report was based on a visit to India between August 20 and September 2, 2005, “motivated by the fact that India has the largest number of undernourished people in the world and one of the highest levels of child malnutrition”. The report, which reviews “the situation of hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity in India” and whether the theory of “hunger amidst plenty” stands, has made some startling revelations. Over half of India’s women and children suffer severe malnutrition and chronic undernourishment. Over 47% of children are underweight, and 46% stunted in their growth, figures higher than most countries in poverty-stricken sub-Saharan Africa, notes the report. Expressing doubts over the government’s claim that poverty in India had actually declined from 36% to 26% between 1993 and 2000, Ziegler says there is considerable debate as to whether the decline in poverty levels is simply a result of changes in methods of data collection. “One explanation may be that the assumed cost of a minimum food basket no longer reflects the real cost of food in India. Poverty remains concentrated in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka. In some states, feudalistic patterns of land ownership persist despite its legal abolition and the Land Ceiling Act,” says the report. Slamming the Indian government for the rising number of farmer suicides, the report says sustained economic growth in the 1990s made the country a more market-oriented economy, but this did not mean equitable benefits for all Indians. The middle and upper classes benefited, but the poor suffered a decline in living standards. The focus on a more export-oriented economy has seen a shift from subsistence to cash crops, reducing the cultivation of grain, pulses and millets for household consumption. With cash crops requiring increasingly expensive inputs such as seeds and fertiliser, many farmers have been pushed heavily into debt, explaining the increasing number of farmer suicides -- nearly 10,000 by 2004 -- says the report. It also criticises India for altering the Public Distribution System (PDS), the world’s largest food-based safety net, from a universal system to a targeted one, in 1997. This has created the paradox of huge excess stocks of foodgrain held with the Food Corporation of Indian, adding to costs and therefore to losses, and leading to a substantially higher food subsidy. SOURCE: Infochange India News and Features |
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