Our collective conscience was shaken recently when India woke up to the news of its daughters being brutally violated. Another news that did not garner much attention but was equally heart-wrenching was the report about six children of a family in Kerala whose hunger compelled them to eat mud... yes, mud. What can be more subhuman, that too in this modern age? If this is the prevailing situation, then the chances of achieving Zero Hunger by 2030, Goal 2 of the UN Sustainable Development agenda, appear poor. Around 850 million people in the world are hungry and malnourished, and more than half of them are from Asia, particularly South Asia.
In fact, India is at the rock bottom of the Global Hunger Index of 117 countries, coming in at 102. The only Asian country behind India is Afghanistan. Even our neighbours like Pakistan and Bangladesh, who otherwise have poor human development indices, are better placed in this index. Despite the efforts of the government and civil society, the report of children feeding on muck tells a story of the chasm between goals and action. India has a National Food Security Act, perhaps one of the biggest in the world in terms of quantum of allocation, reach and geographic spread.
The targeted public distribution system, which bears under it the Antyodaya Anna Yojana, feeds the poorest of the poor and has a definite database of the beneficiaries. Besides the TPDS, maternity nutrition programmes and integrated child health schemes are all subsumed under the National Food Security Act. Experts vary on the share that the programme takes in the total government receipts. It has been pegged between 11 per cent and 28 per cent of the total government receipts by different experts, who vary in their methodologies.
Suffice to say that the food security programme of India is an ambitious and well-intentioned one. The programme is essential for India to come out of the chronic and vicious cycle of poverty and malnutrition. As has been seen in certain studies, a notable one being the findings of Amartya Sen, it is not always the non-availability of food that underlies hunger and starvation. It is often a lack of access to food, which Sen terms “entitlement”. This nails the prevailing conditions of our food security programme. The “distribution gaps”, not lackof food, is perpetuating the chronic problem and substantially blocking India from reaping the fruits of this programme.
The reported story of children feeding on muck further corroborates this fact. This underscores the importance of addressing these distribution gaps in our food security programme. One of the significant steps in bridging this gap, the State Food Commission, is inbuilt in the Act itself. The commission’s functions under the Act include a) monitoring and evaluating the implementation of this Act, in relation to the state; b) inquiring into violations of entitlement either suo motu or on receipt of complaint; c) giving advice to the state government on effective implementation of this Act; d) giving advice to the state government, their agencies, autonomous bodies as well as NGOs involved in delivery of relevant services, for the effective implementation of foodand nutrition-related schemes, and to enable individuals to fully access their entitlements specified in this Act; e) hearing appeals against orders of the district grievance redressal officer; f) preparing annual reports that shall be laid before the state legislature by the state government.
Sadly, many states are yet to give effect to this portion of the Act by making necessary notifications. As can be seen from the mandated functions of the commission, it is more than just an appellate authority. It has the potential to bridge the gap between various stakeholders including NGOs and civil society groups in the chain of food security programmes.
There is an urgent need to create this institutional mechanism. The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), in its first-ever report on the state of biodiversity, has noted that loss of biodiversity in agriculture and excessive use of fertilisers for cultivation are the foremost reasons for malnutrition. Local and endemic crops that have evolved over time are a rich source of nutrition for the people. Rapid commercialisation of agriculture has led to the cultivation of a few commercial crops at the expense of the local crops, resulting in the virtual extinction of nutritious biodiversity. This further underscores the fact that nutrition is not simply a function of availability of food. The loss of biodiversity further comes at a time when the world is dealing with climate change. The FAO pegs the loss to the global economy on account of wasted food annually at $1 trillion.
A number of NGOs have been engaged in feeding the poor. They function in a ‘Robin Food’ style, a term gaining currency because of the way they cater to the poor. Excess food that is likely to go waste is mobilised and distributed to the vulnerable sections. A restaurant in Israel’s Haifa, bearing the same name, cooks and serves ‘rescued vegetables and fruits’—those that are edible but tend to be rejected or left out due to damages in transit.
Some have turned into mobilebased aggregator apps, while the others physically collect from restaurants, wedding and other ceremonial banquets and redistribute it through their volunteers. This chain needs to be supported and regulated, so that the government can reach those remote vulnerable sections that have failed to find their way into the beneficiary list due to various bureaucratic processes. The hunger index categorises India’s position as “serious”. With India having strongly affirmed its commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals, it is evident that addressing hunger is a pressing priority, requiring immediate attention and prompt action.