Saturday, September 25, 2010
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles : Food security — of APL, BPL & IPL
The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles : Food security — of APL, BPL & IPL
Is 35 kg of rice at Rs. 3 a kilo (for a section of the population) food security? Are there no other determinants of food security? Like health, nutrition, livelihoods, jobs, food prices? Can we even delink the fuel price hike from discussions on food security? Or from the wilful gutting of the public distribution system? Or from the havoc wrought by the ever-growing futures trade in wheat, pulses, edible oils and more?
The truth is the government seeks ways to spend less and less on the very food security it talks about. Hunger is defined not by how many people suffer it, but by how many the government is willing to pay for. Hence the endless search for a lower BPL figure. To the government's great dismay, all three officially-constituted committees have turned up estimates of poverty higher than its own. Even the Tendulkar committee, closest to the ruling elite's worldview, raises the estimate of rural poverty to 42 per cent. (On a weak and fragile basis, it is true. But still higher than the government's count.)
The BPL Expert group headed by N.C. Saxena raises that to around 50 per cent. While the report of the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector states on its first page that 836 million Indians (77 per cent of our people) live on Rs. 20 a day or less. Accepting that, for instance, would mean a few thousand crores more in spending on the hungry. The official line is simple. Since we cannot afford to feed all the hungry, there must only be as many hungry as we can afford to feed.
Is 35 kg of rice at Rs. 3 a kilo (for a section of the population) food security? Are there no other determinants of food security? Like health, nutrition, livelihoods, jobs, food prices? Can we even delink the fuel price hike from discussions on food security? Or from the wilful gutting of the public distribution system? Or from the havoc wrought by the ever-growing futures trade in wheat, pulses, edible oils and more?
The truth is the government seeks ways to spend less and less on the very food security it talks about. Hunger is defined not by how many people suffer it, but by how many the government is willing to pay for. Hence the endless search for a lower BPL figure. To the government's great dismay, all three officially-constituted committees have turned up estimates of poverty higher than its own. Even the Tendulkar committee, closest to the ruling elite's worldview, raises the estimate of rural poverty to 42 per cent. (On a weak and fragile basis, it is true. But still higher than the government's count.)
The BPL Expert group headed by N.C. Saxena raises that to around 50 per cent. While the report of the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector states on its first page that 836 million Indians (77 per cent of our people) live on Rs. 20 a day or less. Accepting that, for instance, would mean a few thousand crores more in spending on the hungry. The official line is simple. Since we cannot afford to feed all the hungry, there must only be as many hungry as we can afford to feed.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Tracking Hunger
Tracking Hunger: "Emerging India either does not know or ignores the statistics: Half its children are malnourished, a record worse than the world’s symbol for deprivation, sub-Saharan Africa. India is ranked 66th out of 88 countries in the Global Hunger Index drawn up by the International Food Policy Research Institute. India is home to a quarter of the world’s hungry – about 230 million people – according to a World Food Programme report released on March 2009. More than 455 million Indians survive on US$ 1.25 ((Rs 56) approximately) a day or less, compared with 420 million in 1981.
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