Food Security For whom?

‘Water, water, everywhere,
nor any drop to drink’
- ‘The Rime of Ancient Mariner’

Replace water with food in this famous expression of despair, and it will typify exactly the condition of a large chunk of India’s population right now.

On World Food Day (October 16) this year, India came to know that it was home to almost half of the world’s hungry. Nearly 35 percent of India’s population, or 350 million people, end their day with an empty stomach, leave alone the average nutrition level among Indians which is so low as to be even more heart wrenching. Close to 90 percent of pregnant women aged between 15 and 49 are undernourished and anaemic; more than 57 million children below 5 years, around 40 percent in this age group, are gravely malnourished. India attained self sufficiency in food grain production in [year], long before China, and today, China has only has 7 million children suffering from malnutrition compared to India’s 57 million, a fact which shows how dismal the Indian government’s performance has been on this front.



The Global Hunger Index brought out by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in year 2008, ranks India 94th among 119 countries. Considering India’s food surplus, this must surely come as a surprise to many, but more importantly, it represents a wake up call for the government.

In 2002, FCI (Food Corporation of India) recorded a foodgrain stock of nearly 62 million tonnes when the required stock was only around 20 million. Keeping a buffer stock is no doubt an indispensable component of ensuring food security, but shouldn’t the government be aware of the adverse consequences of overstocking?

FCI procures foodgrains from farmers at the prevailing Minimum Support Price (MSP) to ensure that production is not halted for want of remunerative prices for the farmers’ produce. However, the MSP in recent years has been excessively high, resulting in a lot of farmers selling a major part of their produce to FCI. There have been instances even of farmers buying food grains from the market and selling to FCI at MSP which is higher than market prices.

All this might imply a rosy picture for the farmers, but economics is never so uncomplicated, is it? We must understand that only the already well off big farmers, who constitute the rural rich, stand to benefit. Ironically, it is they who need absolutely no support from the government. It is the weaker sections of rural society, comprising small and marginal farmers, whose condition has only deteriorated due to high levels of MSP.

With its corporate headquarters in Delhi, Food Corporation of India has only 5 zonal offices across the country and a limited number of procurement centers. These centers are virtually inaccessible to most poor farmers in rural areas, thus defeating the very purpose of a Minimum Support Price policy. Most of these poor farmers have to depend on the market to meet their food requirement as their own produce is not sufficient for their needs.

Because of high MSP prices, market prices, too, climb skywards. This is attributed to low supply conditions in the open market as most of the foodgrain production finds its way to FCI warehouses. And such high market prices spell trouble and empty stomachs for vast numbers of needy citizens in India.

States worst affected by this phenomenon are Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat; while Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir appear to be somewhat better off.

The one step that might improve the food security situation in India is to increase the number of FCI procurement centers, locating a majority of such additions deep in the rural hinterland. This will not only give access to lakhs of farmers, but also encourage the production of local food grains. The other step is to control the Minimum Support Price regime, constantly varying it according to the prevailing market situation.

Such steps address the problems caused by the procurement process, as also the problem of providing, at least partially, some purchasing power to the rural poor; but there is another hurdle that blocks the way towards a food secure India: the nature and condition of the Public Distribution System (PDS) in the country.
…….To Be Continued