Shrinking Cereals, Growing Food Parks

This Report is an update of the Rural Food Insecurity Atlas of 2001 released by the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) and the World Food Programme (WFP). Since then, numerous new programmes have been initiated by the central and state governments for achieving food security in the country. Giving a broad indicative picture of the level of food insecurity in different states and the operation of the nutrition safety net programmes, the Report concludes that the State has to play a crucial role in enhancing foodgrain output, ensuring the widest access to food through expansion of livelihood opportunities and promoting biological utilisation through appropriate investments in public health measures.

A large part of the rural area around Delhi and other big cities has been converted from farmland into more pieces of attractive real estate in a portfolio of land holding. In the process, the attributes of the villages of these formerly completely rural areas are changing fast, not only in terms of ownership and cultivation patterns, but also in terms of the material means of support of the local population and their lifestyles. This also implies significant changes in the nature and options for employment for the local population.

The main issues in this year's economic strategy of the government, especially the intentions as signalled in this year's Budget proposals remain the same as that of 2004. These are employment, the agrarian crisis, nutrition and food security, education, health and social security. In each of these areas, the UPA government promised much. However, the delivery has not only been far below the promises, but in some cases even worse than the previous government.

Given the very large number of suicides by farmers in various parts of India over the last decade, there is a need to probe the issue by utilizing a data source which would provide a comprehensive, nation-wide picture. This paper is a modest attempt to fill that gap. Its basic objective is to put together, and carry out a preliminary analysis on, the secondary data that are available on farmers’ suicides in the country. The paper studies, first, the magnitude and trends in farmers’ suicides in India over 1997-2006; and second, the regional patterns, if any, in the incidence and trends in these suicides.

India is one among the many countries that have been adversely affected by the sharp rise in global wheat prices. While this is partly due to errors on the part of the government, it also reflects the consequences of the rise in food prices globally. This rise, argue, C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh, cannot be explained by pure demand and supply factors. Speculative influences have an important role to play.

In recent years, the ‘official’ India has been patting itself on account of accelerated economic growth rates and the presumed progress in poverty reduction. However, as this paper argues, the recent economic growth has been extremely lopsided; more than ever before. Further, large sections of the country’s population continue to suffer, very acutely, with reference to a whole range of development deficits. This paper is an attempt to sketch a snapshot of India’s economic growth performance, along with some of the major development deficits it is facing.

The consequence of recent structural shifts is that the Indian economy can record the observed creditable rates of non-inflationary growth of aggregate GDP even when its agricultural sector languishes. It appears that a feature of the growth process in a more open and liberalised environment is that the peasantry has a much smaller a role in sustaining economic growth and can thus be partially excluded from development. What is disconcerting is that the self-correcting mechanism that existed in the earlier period to restore a semblance of balance between agricultural and non-agricultural growth are no more operative.

Continuing with the discussion on Basel II and India's banking structure, the authors argue that using external ratings to decide the appropriate risk-weights to assess capital adequacy inevitably leads banks to decide their lending patterns based on pure profit considerations. This makes it difficult to simultaneously implement a banking policy that seeks to direct a proportion of lending to specified sectors for meeting growth and equity objectives.

The tremendous economic pressure that the Indian countryside has come under in the recent years is bound to impact the well-being of the masses in the rural economy. This paper is an attempt to examine the key elements of the contemporary agrarian crisis and its possible consequences for agricultural labourers. It appears that their economic conditions, in any case quite fragile and vulnerable even in 'better' times, have taken quite a battering in the recent years.

The paper explores the controversy that has surrounded the West Bengal Government's land acquisition programme in Singur and situates it within the overall context of economic growth and transformation. It argues one of the most adversely affected groups as a result of the acquisition is relatively large farmers for whom agriculture is a source of accumulation and not livelihood and subsistence. This might explain in part why the resistance has been so strong. The paper argues that equitable and sustained growth is possible only by reducing the share of agriculture in the labour force and therefore that the West Bengal Government's strategy has to focus on maximising the generation of non-farm rural employment.

The increase in the overall inflation rate, as well as the rise in prices of particular commodities in the past year, have brought into question both the sustainability of the current economic growth process and the efficacy of public management of price rise in particular sectors.

It has been evident for some time now that concerns about food security are not relics of the past, but unfortunately only too contemporary in India. The preliminary and partial results of the latest National Family Health Surveys should certainly cause alarm bells on the state of public nutrition to ring very loudly in the corridors of power.

When the search for explanations for the increase in the prices of food began a few months back, some observers turned their attention to the massive increase in forward and futures trading in commodities. What emerged is revealing.

While GDP growth in India is touching new highs, the divergence in sectoral growth rates only increases. While industry and, particularly, services record creditable or remarkable rates of growth, the agricultural sector performs poorly. In this article, C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh discuss some implications of this disproportionality.

Contrary to the promise made by the UPA government in the CMP, its decision to cut food subsidy by reducing the quantity of wheat and rice issued through the PDS and Antyodaya Anna Yojana has severe negative implications for a country where the problem of food security for ordinary people remains intense and may even have worsened in the past year and a half with chronic and severe under-nutrition, even hunger deaths reported from several regions.

Across South Asia, inadequate nutrition and food insecurity remains a major policy challenge despite the fact the food production has increased in all the countries. There has been little change in the prevalence of under-nutrition. Answers are to be found in agrarian crisis and inadequate employment generation but more importantly, in lopsided government policies.

The unprecedented agrarian crisis in India, evident through the farmers' suicides in Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere, has been affecting farmers' lives for nearly a decade. Yet the public and media reactions, as well as the policy responses, have been so intermittent that even now, comprehensive measures to address the systemic problems are yet to be taken.

In meetings in London, Geneva and elsewhere aimed at forging an agreement that could help revive the Doha Round negotiations at the Hong Kong ministerial meeting in December, the focus has been on agriculture and the ECs inability to make an adequate market access offer. All other areas have been neglected on the grounds that an agreement can be found once the deadlock on agriculture is resolved. This article argues that this is a replay of developments during the Uruguay Round in which an inadequate, last minute agreement between the US and the EU on agriculture was used to force developing countries to offer major concession in other areas of significance to them.

A recent NSSO report on the indebtedness of farmer households provides important information on the extent and nature of cultivators' debt. This article considers the main results of this survey and the implications for policy.

While the US has got and continues to get a range of economic concessions from India, India is not making too many economic demands from the former from a large developing country perspective. This is because post-liberalisation, India feels more concerned about software and IT-enabled services exports, rather than agriculture.