Food Security of India

India, by virtue of its population, offers massive opportunities and challenges. The manpower and human resource that remains untapped presents myriad opportunities and providing civic amenities to such a large population poses vast challenges. The opportunities as well as the challenges go far beyond just these. One of the major challenge is ensuring food security for the 1.2 billion Indians. This basic necessity for human life is still at bay, six decades after our independence.

In a country where almost 50% of the children are malnourished and their mothers weak and anemic; one would have hoped that food security would be one of the priorities of the government. But six decades after the independence, 12 five year plans later, we are still "debating" a Food Security Bill and our expenditure on food subsidy has been less than 1% for the past 5 years.

At times when food inflation is at its peaks and the poor are struggling to make ends meet; its quintessential that we enact the National Food security Bill at the earliest. But we cite the poor current account deficit as the limitation and are aiming for a reduced subsidy of less than 2%. There could be no greater shame for a government than its inability to feed the population.

Year after year, we pull out the stats of bumper crops and record growths. All that talk and stats is of gross amounts, the reality however is that year after year the per capita production has decreased. We prefer to live in the miasma of statistics rather than taking reality head on. The reality that we are 66th in the list of 105 nations on the food security index, below Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Ecuador.

Even if it's implemented, its going to be only for the BPL households, shortcomings of which have been well documented. The whole procedure of identifying the BPL families is flawed. There should be a universal PDS, to minimise the possibility of flaws and discrimination. Universal PDS is in line with the responsibility of the state to provide for the basic necessities of every citizen who feels the need. Right to Food should be the basic human right of the citizen just as Right to Life is.

Time is of utmost important for this bill. For everyday that the bill is delayed, there are millions who will sleep without a meal. Effort should be made to prevent every food grain  from getting rotten. It's a cardinal sin, in a nation where people die of hunger, to let food grains to rotten in the open. There should be construction of warehouses and cold storage in every district. We could hardly afford laxity in matters that affect such a large population of the nation. A state that fails to provide food to its citizens is a failed state.

"True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."