Tuesday, September 14, 2010
India's Food security woes
"Markets can't do everything," says Donaldson, declining to comment directly on the court order. "One of the things they can't do entirely on their own is accommodate basic needs or satisfy basic human rights. What needs to happen is for governments to be more creative about using markets so that they can accomplish policy objectives like satisfying basic needs." Governments cannot shy away from the responsibility of distributing food to the hungry by citing economic inefficiencies, Donaldson says. "When the government says it is not efficient to distribute food in some instances, the problem with that is that efficiency depends on where you look for it." He offers the example of a trucking firm that finds it is not going to be paid enough to deliver much-needed human blood supplies to victims of an earthquake. "It's true that it's inefficient for the company to do something that will create a small loss for it. But it is pretty clear here that it is not efficient for society as a whole to have that blood and not use it. So what is efficient for a government may not be efficient for society."
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Rajesh Chakrabarti, assistant professor of finance at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. "But the question here is this: If there was no surplus food grain available, should we not have said that the government should import food to feed the poor? In other words, hunger is inexcusable, with or without surplus stock."
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Bangalore-based Akshaya Patra Foundation, which runs the world's largest school mid-day meal program -- be roped in to oversee the distribution of the grain and integrate that effort with other welfare programs along with private initiatives.
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ne-year-old, escaping the 1943 Bengal famine that claimed three million lives. "What [Sen] found was -- and we find this again and again -- there was adequate supply of food. This is the tragedy we have discovered about famines. In most instances -- even in the context of famines -- there typically is enough food to go around, but you have panic buying, hoarding, price-gouging and government mismanagement." He points to nonprofits in the U.S. that collect and redistribute food and other supplies that would otherwise go waste: Surplus Distribution Co. of Akron, Ohio, and Philabundance in Philadelphia; the latter has arrangements with large grocery chains to collect surplus food and distribute it to the poor and hungry.
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India's situation of excess food grain stocks goes hand-in-hand with what many see as a preoccupation with food security. That can be traced to the insecurity that gripped the nation in the mid-1950s, when it averted widespread starvation by importing U.S. food grains under the so-called PL-480 program of the then Dwight Eisenhower administration. In fact, some media reports claim the government prefers to hold excess food grain stocks even at the risk of wastage, rather than run the risk of shortages. After all, governments in earlier years have fallen under the weight of high food prices.
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Kavitha Kuruganti, trustee at Kheti Virasat Mission, an organization that helps farmers in India's Punjab state cope with the effects of "intensive agricultural models" or excessive cultivation. "Today, it seems we have grain we should be distributing free of cost because the Supreme Court orders [it] or because that seems to be a just way of dealing with it. But why has it accumulated in the first instance?" she asks. "It's got something to do with the impoverishment we are subjecting most people in this country to."
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Meanwhile, India's population of poor families rises and falls with every statistical redefinition. The agricultural ministry's records had about 65 million poor families covered by its PDS umbrella. But after the Supreme Court's upbraiding, Pawar agreed with the Tendulkar Committee's report which put India's poor at 81 million families, or 37.2% of the country's population. Devinder Sharma, a food policy analyst and chairman of the New Delhi-based Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security, feels the government should go by the United Nations Development Program's estimate that 55% of Indians are below the poverty line !
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Rajesh Chakrabarti, assistant professor of finance at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. "But the question here is this: If there was no surplus food grain available, should we not have said that the government should import food to feed the poor? In other words, hunger is inexcusable, with or without surplus stock."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bangalore-based Akshaya Patra Foundation, which runs the world's largest school mid-day meal program -- be roped in to oversee the distribution of the grain and integrate that effort with other welfare programs along with private initiatives.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ne-year-old, escaping the 1943 Bengal famine that claimed three million lives. "What [Sen] found was -- and we find this again and again -- there was adequate supply of food. This is the tragedy we have discovered about famines. In most instances -- even in the context of famines -- there typically is enough food to go around, but you have panic buying, hoarding, price-gouging and government mismanagement." He points to nonprofits in the U.S. that collect and redistribute food and other supplies that would otherwise go waste: Surplus Distribution Co. of Akron, Ohio, and Philabundance in Philadelphia; the latter has arrangements with large grocery chains to collect surplus food and distribute it to the poor and hungry.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
India's situation of excess food grain stocks goes hand-in-hand with what many see as a preoccupation with food security. That can be traced to the insecurity that gripped the nation in the mid-1950s, when it averted widespread starvation by importing U.S. food grains under the so-called PL-480 program of the then Dwight Eisenhower administration. In fact, some media reports claim the government prefers to hold excess food grain stocks even at the risk of wastage, rather than run the risk of shortages. After all, governments in earlier years have fallen under the weight of high food prices.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kavitha Kuruganti, trustee at Kheti Virasat Mission, an organization that helps farmers in India's Punjab state cope with the effects of "intensive agricultural models" or excessive cultivation. "Today, it seems we have grain we should be distributing free of cost because the Supreme Court orders [it] or because that seems to be a just way of dealing with it. But why has it accumulated in the first instance?" she asks. "It's got something to do with the impoverishment we are subjecting most people in this country to."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile, India's population of poor families rises and falls with every statistical redefinition. The agricultural ministry's records had about 65 million poor families covered by its PDS umbrella. But after the Supreme Court's upbraiding, Pawar agreed with the Tendulkar Committee's report which put India's poor at 81 million families, or 37.2% of the country's population. Devinder Sharma, a food policy analyst and chairman of the New Delhi-based Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security, feels the government should go by the United Nations Development Program's estimate that 55% of Indians are below the poverty line !
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