Eradicating Hunger from India

Providing healthy, hygienci and nutrious food for all citizens is the biggest challenge for the government. This can be achieved only by increasing the food production multi-fold and plugging the loopholes in the supply chain. Either the purchasing power of everyone should be increased by providing high income or government should transact cash through nationalised banks for the poorer people. This can be achieved by providing a smart card. The UPA II should expedite this process through UIC and remove hunger from the map of India.

Chaitanya Kalbag writes in The Times of India (3 July 2009)

I remember standing in long queues at ration shops in Calcutta, Madras and Delhi when i was younger. Lines for food were a part of everyday life.
You got substandard rice and dirty, large-grained sugar. The majority of Indians lived on rationed rice, sugar, kerosene, palmolein and even cloth. My children are the first generation to not experience food rationing.

It is interesting that you see fewer queues in India today. But don't think for a moment that we are a land of plenty. You see fewer queues because there are far more ghosts.

The Green Revolution did fend off famine, but the definition of famine is very subjective. I was reminded of the fragility of India's food situation this past week as the clangour about the delayed monsoon began to get deafening. Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar assured the people that there were ample foodgrain stocks.

Probably very true and comforting if you are talking to real people, not ghosts. The trouble is that our ration shops (there are half a million of them) supply wheat, rice, sugar and kerosene to a lot of people who don't exist. The government estimates that there are 65.2 million people below the poverty line (BPL) and so entitled to rations of 20 kg of foodgrains a month at half the "economic cost". But there are actually more than 80 million ration cards issued to BPL families. That is not all. The government has issued a total of 223 million ration cards against a total estimated 180 million households. In other words, there are at least 43 million ghost cards.

Reportedly, prisoners in one US state get only two square meals a day three days a week. "This is inhumane," a newspaper editorial said. Over here in India, the government says blandly: "A National Sample Survey Exercise points towards the fact that about 5 per cent of the total population in the country sleeps without two square meals a day". That is 60 million people.

The Antyodaya Anna Yojana aims to help the truly destitute by selling them up to 35 kg of foodgrains a month ^ rice at Rs 2 and wheat at Rs 3 a kg. As of April 2008, the government had identified 2,42,755 "poorest of the poor" families.
The UPA government has taken power almost exactly midway through the 11th five-year Plan. Next Monday, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee might want to address some of the concerns spelled out in the Plan documents.

"There are large errors of exclusion and inclusion and ghost cards are common," the Planning Commission says, adding that "leakages" are common ^ higher than 75 per cent in Bihar and Punjab. During 2003-04, it estimates that eight million tonnes of foodgrains out of 14 million allotted to BPL families never reached them. "For every 1 kilogram that was delivered to the poor, Government of India had to issue 2.23 kilograms" of foodgrains.

These figures have almost certainly worsened over the past year as the economy slowed down. And this is happening at a time when foodgrain prices have been rising steadily, despite misleading data that shows that India's official measure of inflation, the wholesale price index (WPI), is now slightly negative. Although experts say the WPI is a more reliable, broader measure, the consumer price index, which takes in what the aam aadmi buys everyday, has put inflation at over 10 per cent in the 2008-09 fiscal year.

Higher prices hit the poor hardest. Statistics show that in rural India, the poor spend close to half their incomes on food, and higher food prices are deepening malnutrition.

Higher prices also mean changes in food habits. Cereal consumption has been falling steadily in rural India ^ from 15.3 kg per capita per month in 1972-73 to 13.4 kg in 1993-94 and 12.12 kg in 2004-05. This would not have been alarming if the poor were consuming more of other foods like milk, meat, vegetables and fruits. Over a 20-year period, the Planning Commission says, per capita consumption of calories and protein has steadily declined in India. The calorie norm for the rural poor was set at 2,400 calories a day, and rural India's calorie consumption has dropped to 2,047 calories from 2,221. In urban India, cereal consumption has fallen less precipitously, from 11.3 kg in 1973-74 to 10.6 kg in 1993-94 and 9.94 kg in 2004-05.

No wonder one-third of India's adult population in 2005-06 had a body mass index below 18.5, the cut-off for malnutrition, or that India accounts for about half the developing world's low-body-weight babies, and a very high rate of anaemia among women and girls.

The new government has said it will push a Food Security Act. What those 60 million forever-hungry people need is nutritious food, and clean drinking water. Pawar and Mukherjee have their work cut out for them.

Ensuring Food Security

Food security is paramount for any nation in the world. Traditional countries face innumerable risks due to the penetration of dangerous seeds and chemically dangerous substances into the agricultural fields. Now the challenge is to safeguard its seeds and ensure the healthy and beneficial crops to farmers and consumers.

M.S. Swaminathan writes in The Hindu, 12.3.2009,
Lying 78 degrees north, the Norwegian village of Longyearbyen on Svalbard island is the farthest one can travel on a commercial flight to the North Pole. On February 26, 2008, a Global Seed Vault was opened here to preserve a representative sample of the genetic diversity in crop plants. In the middle of an ice mountain, a 120-metre tunnel has been chiselled out of solid stone leading to three vaults that can store 4.5 million varieties. This capacity is sufficient to protect all the diversity that exists and what is likely to arise in the future. The vaults are in permafrost conditions where the natural temperature is minus 4 degrees C round the year. This has been further lowered to minus 18 degrees, the optimal temperature for long-term seed viability.
The Global Seed Vault is owned by the Norwegian Government, but managed jointly by the Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture, the Global Crop Diversity Trust and the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre. The seeds are stored under “black box condition,” meaning that the storage boxes remain the property of the institution which sent them and can be opened only with the depositor’s permission, avoiding conflicts relating to intellectual property rights. On the first anniversary of this unique Gene Bank, Norway organised at Svalbard in February a seminar on “Frozen Seeds in a Frozen Mountain: Feeding a Warming World,” where I delivered a lecture on “Freezing Seeds: A Humanitarian Issue?”

In my presidential address on “Genetic Conservation: Microbes to Man” delivered at the XV International Congress of Genetics in New Delhi in December 1983, I pleaded for international cooperative efforts to foster a conservation continuum. The starting point of the continuum should be in situ on-farm conservation of land races by farm families in their own fields to help conserve intra-specific variability, which is an invaluable asset in crop improvement. For example, thanks largely to the efforts of farm and tribal women, there are now over 125,000 strains of rice that can grow from below sea level to over 2,000-m-high mountainous conditions. Rice grows in upland rainfed areas as well as in flood-prone areas. India has instituted a Genome Saviour Award to accord social recognition and economic reward to the primary conservers for whom conservation is both a way of life and the principal means of food, health and livelihood security.

At the end-point of the conservation continuum, I recommended the creation of facilities for long-term seed storage under permafrost conditions. Normal cryogenic gene banks are expensive to run due to electricity costs. The operational cost can be brought down when seeds are stored under permafrost conditions. The Svalbard Vault is such a facility. The conservation continuum envisaged in my 1983 address is thus complete. Such an integrated conservation system involves rural and tribal women and men on the one hand, and environmental scientists and engineers on the other.

There is a vital difference between in situ on-farm conservation by tribal and rural families and cryogenic preservation under permafrost conditions. On-farm conservation promotes not only preservation but evolution through genetic recombination and natural and human selection. Keeping seeds under cold storage helps preserve them for future use but does not permit evolution. Any effective national genetic conservation system should include measures that can foster genetic evolution and selection, and ex situ cryogenic preservation in gene banks.
Genetic erosion caused largely by loss of habitat and altered land use and agronomic practice is extensive. The loss of every gene and species limits future food security options, particularly at a time when climate change is presenting new challenges such as changes in temperature and precipitation, frequent floods and coastal storms and rise in sea levels. Over 20 years ago, the late Dr. S K Sinha and I showed that a one-degree rise in mean temperature may reduce the duration of the wheat crop in Punjab by a week. This will reduce yield by nearly 400 kg per hectare. Since wheat yield is highly influenced by the night temperature that prevails during the grain ripening phase, higher temperatures will have a disastrous effect on productivity and production.

Recombinant DNA technology provides opportunities to move genes across sexual barriers and create novel genetic combinations. This is why the preservation of at least a small seed sample of existing variability in long-term storage structures as in Svalbard assumes urgency. For example, mangrove species provide genes to develop crop varieties with salinity tolerance. Transgenic rice strains have been developed by scientists of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), Chennai. Deep-water rice varieties provide opportunities to grow crops in flood-prone areas in the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Regional cooperation in this area, as for example among India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka, will benefit all of them.

An example of effective regional cooperation is provided by the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre (NordGen) located at Alnarp in Sweden. It is responsible for the conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources of farm animals and plants that are of importance to agriculture, horticulture and forestry. NordGen was established on January 1, 2008, merging the Nordic Gene Banks for plants and for farm animals and the Nordic Council for forest reproductive material.

We also need new genes to ensure the security of crop yields under conditions of invasion by transboundary pests. The Ug 99 strain of stem rust of wheat from Uganda is likely to damage the wheat crop unless steps are taken to identify genes for resistance to this rust fungus. Our scientists have identified such wheat varieties. Genes for tolerance to drought are available in wild plants such as Prosopis juliflora. These have been transferred by MSSRF scientists to rice and tobacco. Thus, genetic variability is the feedstock for the biotechnology industry. The Herbal Biovalley under development in Orissa’s Koraput region is designed to integrate biodiversity, biotechnology and business to mutually reinforce conservation and commercialisation.
There is a need to strengthen our infrastructure for the conservation and sustainable and equitable use of plant and animal genetic resources. The outbreak of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza caused loss of genetic material in poultry in Maharashtra, West Bengal and Assam due to the culling of native breeds. I have suggested an offshore quarantine facility in one of the uninhabited Lakshadweep islands, which could provide opportunities to test native poultry genetic strains for resistance to invasive alien species. The National Commission on Farmers recommended a National Biosecurity System to prevent harm from transboundary pests and diseases. Eternal vigilance is the price of stable agriculture: the sooner we establish an effective biosecurity system the greater will be the chances of avoiding pandemics.

Food at affordable prices is a prerequisite for peace and social security. Awareness of the importance of biodiversity for food, health and livelihood security is crucial. Anthropogenically induced climate change is likely to become the most harmful catastrophe affecting human security and well-being. In Svalbard, Norway has created a Noah’s ark to serve as a safety net for food security in an era of global warming and climate change. Biodiversity for all and forever should be the bottom line of our conservation ethics. Genetic literacy is essential to stimulate public and political interest in genetic resources conservation. The MSSRF started Genome Clubs in schools for this purpose a decade ago, which led to the formation of DNA Clubs in schools with support from the Department of Biotechnology.

India has a Plant Variety Protection and Farmers’ Rights’ Act and a Biodiversity Act to ensure that genetic material is conserved with the involvement of panchayats and local communities. It has long-term seed storage facilities for plant varieties at the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources in New Delhi, and has National Bureaus for the conservation of animal, fish and forest genetic resources. India is thus in a position to promote a conservation continuum.

All our resources must be used to put back the farmers rights and safety of agricultural fields. More importantly the seeds and crops must be protected from the exploitation of the foreign elements which are very keen to exploit the farmers for quick profits. Even the local chemicals and industrialists step in to destroy the seeds and agriculture. Efforts should be directed in stopping these elements at the start itself.

The wheat import crime

Aam aadmi rhetoric mongering UPA government is committing sin after sin against the commoners. The liberal import of wheat when the local granaries are overflowing is the recent case in point. Unfortunately there is not a single soul in the power corridors to take the responsibility to explain the reason behind the wheat import. The man responsible for the explanation – union agriculture minister is busy in cricketing and politicking.

The crimes are committed at multiple levels. One, higher prices paid to the imported wheat. Two, lower MSP to the wheat producing Indian farmers. Three, the quality of the imported wheat is inferior and beyond human consumption. Four, a large scale of the PDS wheat is stolen by the vested interests in connivance with the government authorities. Five, no seriousness and sincerity among the concerned people to adequately explain the motives behind the wheat import.

The State Trading Corporation (STC) had floated three global tenders to import nearly 15 lakh tonnes of wheat at a maximum cost of USD 389.45 and a minimum cost of USD 263 a tone. Surprisingly the low cost tender was cancelled and an exorbitant amount was paid to import 12 lakh tonnes of wheat. This higher price payment tells the naked truth. The wheat import was to benefit certain individuals and parties. Clearly the aim is not to uplift the poor people.

On the other hand the national food grain production has gone up to 209.32 million tonnes which is 4.71 million tonnes higher than the previous year’s production. Out of this the wheat production was 74.89 million tonnes which is 5.65 million tonnes higher than the previous year’s production. There are 101 million tones of wheat available in the central pool as on 1 October 2007.

Why the government is reluctant in procuring wheat from the local farmers? What is the harm in giving better prices to them? These questions need immediate answers.
Source: The Business Line, 5 October 2007

Under the cover to help the poor, the government is destroying their lives. Either they are suffering with the poor quality of food grains supplied or not delivered the subsidized products at all. According to a report by The Times of India, Rs. 32,000 crore worth of food grains were stolen in the last three years. Except 12 states, rest of the country faces the large-scale diversion of PDS for private profit. Not a single grain of wheat reaches the targeted poor people of North eastern states. This region’s problems are compounded with terrorism, corruption and lack of physical infrastructure.

Liberalising the food sector is an essential step to prevent the pretentious actions of the state. The mill owners should be allowed to import food grains directly. They should be given import duty concessions and all technical assistance. The government can serve the poor better by withdrawing its good intentions but bad outcome programming. The sooner it is done the better the food security of the nation. The agriculture ministry should be the starting point of this noble Indian mission.