India is Hungry: Causes, Consequences and Solutions

India is Hungry: Causes, Consequences and Solutions

UPSC GENERAL STUDIES: 

Paper II: Issues Related to Poverty and Hunger; 

Paper III: Food Management

Table of Content

Quotes on Hunger

(Gandhi, Eisenhower, Borlaug)

Hunger Scenario in India (Stats)

Reasons for Prevalence Hunger in India

(Poverty Trap; Low Agri Investment; Climate; Unstable Market, Food Wastage etc.)

Solutions to India’s Hunger Problem

(Food Security; Food Management; Combat Hidden Hunger; Technology; Livelihood etc.)

Associated Issue

(Global Hunger Index)

Authors' Note

  

Quotes on Hunger

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”

- Mahatma Gandhi

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

(American politician and general who served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961.)

You can’t build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery.

- Norman Borlaug

(Norman Ernest Borlaug was an American biologist, humanitarian and Nobel laureate who has been called "the father of the Green Revolution", "agriculture's greatest spokesperson" and "The Man Who Saved A Billion Lives".)

Introduction

According to World Food Programme (WFP), hunger is not having enough to eat to meet energy requirements. Hunger can lead to malnutrition, but absence of hunger does not imply absence of malnutrition.

There are three components of food security—availability (having sufficient quantities of appropriate food available), access (having adequate income or other resources to access food), and utilization/consumption (having adequate dietary intake and the ability to absorb and use nutrients in the body)

Hunger Scenario in India

• On the Global Hunger Index, India ranks in at 55. 
• According to a study by the International Food Policy Research Institute, one-sixth of India’s population is undernourished, while 190 million people go to bed hungry daily.
• A total of 30% children below the age of 5 years are underweight. 

Reasons for Prevalence Hunger in India

Poverty trap

• People living in poverty cannot afford nutritious food for themselves and their families. 
• Impact on Earning: This makes them weaker and less able to earn the money that would help them escape poverty and hunger.
• Impact on Children: This is not just a day-to-day problem: when children are chronically malnourished, or ‘stunted’, it can affect their future income, condemning them to a life of poverty and hunger.
• Vicious Cycle: In short, the poor are hungry and their hunger traps them in poverty.

Lack of investment in agriculture

• There is lack of key agricultural infrastructure, such as enough roads, warehouses and irrigation. 
• Impact on Food Supply: The results are high transport costs, lack of storage facilities and unreliable water supplies. All conspire to limit agricultural yields and access to food. 
• Suggestions: Investments in improving land management, using water more efficiently and making more resistant seed types available can bring big improvements.
• Anecdotal Evidence: Research by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization shows that investment in agriculture is five times more effective in reducing poverty and hunger than investment in any other sector.

Climate and weather

• Climate change is exacerbating already adverse natural conditions. 
• Natural disasters such as floods and long periods of drought are on the increase with calamitous consequences for the hungry poor.
• Impact on Food Supply: Drought is one of the most common causes of food shortages in the world.
• Impact of Unsustainable activities on Food Supply: Salination, desertification and deforestation by human hands accelerates the erosion of land, which could be used for growing food.

Unstable markets

• Impact of Skyrocketing Prices on Access to Food: In recent years, the price of food products has been very unstable. Roller-coaster food prices make it difficult for the poorest people to access nutritious food consistently.
• Impact on Children: The poor need access to adequate food all year round. Price spikes may temporarily put food out of reach, which can have lasting consequences for small children.
• Exacerbates probability of Malnutrition:  When prices rise, consumers often shift to cheaper, less-nutritious foods, heightening the risks of micronutrient deficiencies and other forms of malnutrition.

Food Wastage

Global Scenario:

According to United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organization, 42% of fruit and vegetables grown in the Asia-Pacific region, and up to 20% of the grain, fail to reach consumers because of poor post-harvest handling.

Stats

• There is no dearth of food; the problem lies in transporting and reaching it to the people. 
• According to an agriculture ministry study, India is growing more food but also wasting up to 67 million tones’ of it every year. That’s more than the national output of Britain, and enough food for Bihar, one of India’s larger states, for a whole year.
• The value of the food lost – Rs 92,000 crore is nearly two-thirds of what it costs the government to feed 600 million poor Indians with subsidized ration under the
• National Food Security programme.
• According to 2014 study by the Indian Institute of Management in Kolkata, cold storage facilities are available for just 10 per cent of India’s perishable produce – and are mostly used for potatoes
• Also wastage of water when millions of Indians don’t have water for drinking and sanitation and also degradation of land is a matter of concern. 

Reasons

This wastage happens because of:

• Improper handling
• Lack of on farm weather proof storage
• Lack of refrigeration at the supplier end
• Also India’s current system of distributing food to the needy is seriously flawed. Inefficient planning leaves grain rotting in government warehouses rather than getting to the hungry.
• Another issue is corrupt ration shop dealers who pilfer food and sell it on the black market rather than to intended beneficiaries thus creating artificial shortage.

Import Deregulation

• Deregulated imports are a major cause of poverty and famine in countries like India.
• Globalization has dismantled the systems, which guaranteed domestic market access for farmers, a system which brought food security to the poor. Meanwhile rich countries subsidize their agricultural production making it inevitable that exports will be dumped on the poor.
• The destruction of livelihoods and incomes of the small rural producers is one of the reason for increased endemic hunger in India.

Export Deregulation

• The export-oriented agriculture robs the poor of their land, their water and their livelihoods.
• There is an inverse relation between increasing agricultural exports and declining food consumption locally and nationally.
• When countries grow flowers and vegetables for exports, they also sow the seeds of hunger.

Hidden Hunger

In middle-income groups, substituting breast milk with bottle feed deprives the infant of natural nutrients and immunity found in mother's milk, and formula feeds are often over-diluted either due to ignorance or as a money-saving measure.

The ICMR's National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad, did a study that found 50 per cent of school-going children suffering from multiple micronutrient deficiency despite eating a 'balanced' diet that was high on quantity but low on protein, calories, vitamins and minerals, often falling far below the recommended daily allowance.

Solutions to India's Hunger Problem

Food security

National Food Security Act, 2013 with the objective to provide for food and nutritional security in human life cycle approach, by ensuring access to adequate quantity of quality food at affordable prices to people to live a life with dignity. 

The Act provides for coverage of up to 75% of the rural population and up to 50% of the urban population for receiving subsidized food grains under Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS), thus covering about two-thirds of the population. 

32 states/UTs are implementing the Act in DBT mode i.e. they are providing direct cash transfer of food subsidy to the beneficiaries.

Food Management

Reforms in PDS

Introduction of electronic point of sale (ePOS ) in  PDS system enabling end to end computerization thus reducing leakages.

The High Level Committee, chaired by former food minister Shanta Kumar, in its recommendation to government last year had stated gradual introduction of cash transfers in PDS.

Investing in storage

FCI should gradually outsource grain-storage to private sector players on competitive bidding - give them contract to store FCI grains for 20 years.

Don’t store grain in “Cover and plinth” godowns. Convert them into “Silos” with Mechanized / robotic assemblies, with help of private sector. Madhya Pradesh has already begun doing this.

           

Mechanize farm operations. 

Policy makers have initiated preliminary support to farm mechanization by including it as focus area in broader schemes such as in Rashtrya Krishi Vikas Yojna and Macro Management of Agriculture schemes.

There is a need to focus research efforts towards design and development of farm machinery suitable for different types of soils, farm sizes and diverse crops.

Combating Hidden Hunger

The way out of hidden hunger is by diversifying diets, fortifying commercial foods (successfully done in iodized salt) and bio-fortification—using conventional or transgenic methods to increase micro-nutrient content in food crops.

Technology driven solution

The answer to dealing with urban hunger lies in creating a supply chain of sustained feeding, and technology can play a big role in it.

Many social start-ups founded by young Indians are using technology to feed the poor.

No Food Waste, Feeding Indians have mobile app that allows them to crowd source data on hunger spots in India and take requests for donation of excess food which is then distributed to the needy.

Generation of livelihood opportunities

While the tech-driven feeding programmes are a “good initiative”, they can only be a temporary measure.

Charity cannot be a solution to fighting hunger.

Besides, there is the issue of dignity associated with the donation of leftover food.

The real solution lies in creating skills and livelihood opportunities. The rural jobs programme like MGNREGA and Skill India initiative is a step in this direction.

International Collaboration

To work towards greater food security, India is also working in close synergy with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) which is a knowledge partner, adding value to existing technologies and approaches. The agency has helped India take the holistic ‘seed to plate’ approach.

FAO also provides technical assistance and capacity building to enable the transfer of best practices as well as successful lessons from other countries to replicate them to India’s agriculture system.

By strengthening the resilience of smallholder farmers, food security can be guaranteed for the planet’s increasingly hungry global population while also whittling down carbon emissions.

Associated Issues

Global Hunger Index (GHI)

What is GHI?

The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a tool designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger globally, regionally, and by country.

The GHI is designed to raise awareness and understanding of regional and country differences in the struggle against hunger.

How do you interpret a GHI score?

An increase in a country's GHI score indicates that the hunger situation is worsening, while a decrease in the score indicates improvement in the country's hunger situation.

What are the four components used in the GHI formula? 

The four component indicators are:

Undernourishment: the proportion of undernourished people as a percentage of the population (reflecting the share of the population with insufficient caloric intake);

Child wasting: the proportion of children under the age of five who suffer from wasting (low weight for their height, reflecting acute undernutrition);

Child stunting: the proportion of children under the age of five who suffer from stunting (low height for their age, reflecting chronic undernutrition); 

Child mortality: the mortality rate of children under the age of five (partially reflecting the fatal synergy of inadequate nutrition and unhealthy environments).

Why are scores based on these four indicators? 

Hunger is a multidimensional problem.

To reflect the multidimensional nature of hunger, the GHI combines the four component indicators into one index. 

What's new about this year's formula?

This year, GHI scores have been calculated using a revised and improved formula. 

The revision replaces child underweight, previously the sole indicator of child undernutrition, with two indicators of child undernutrition—child wasting and child stunting which are equally weighted in the GHI calculation.

The revised formula also standardizes each of the component indicators to balance their contribution to the overall index and to changes in GHI scores over time.

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Authors' Note: This article has provided a comprehensive overview of causes, consequences and solutions of the Hunger Problem. A short analysis of India's present Global Hunger Index Ranking will be a good value addition over and above this information. Your comments and suggestions are welcome. If you have found this and other articles on our blog useful, you may follow us to receive regular updates of our activities.