Themes > Current Issues
18.08.2009
Securing Food for the People
Jayati
Ghosh
It
is not surprising that questions of food security and the right to food
have become such urgent political issues in India today. Rapid aggregate
income growth over the past two decades has not addressed the basic
issue of ensuring the food security of the population. Instead, nutrition
indicators have stagnated and per capita calorie consumption has actually
declined, suggesting that the problem of hunger may have got worse rather
than better.
Consider the evidence on nutritional outcomes from the most recent National Family Health Survey (NFHS) conducted in 2005-06. According to this, 46 per cent of children below 3 years are underweight; 33 per cent of women and 28 per cent of men have Body Mass Index (BMI) below normal; 79 per cent of children aged 6-35 months have anaemia, as do 56 per cent of ever married women aged 15-49 years and 24 per cent of similar men; 58 per cent of pregnant women have anaemia. The national averages mask locational differences: all these indicators are much worse in rural India.
Further, these indicators have scarcely changed, or have changed very little, since the previous NFHS in 1998-99. In terms of calorie consumption the picture is even worse. According to the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) large survey of 2004-05, the average daily intake of calories of the rural population has dropped by 106 Kcal (4.9 per cent) from 2153 Kcal to 2047 Kcal from 1993-94 to 2004-05 and by 51 Kcal (2.5 per cent) from 2071 to 2020 Kcal in urban areas. The average daily intake of protein by the Indian population decreased from 60.2 to 57 grams in rural India between 1993-94 and 2004-05 and remained stable at around 57 grams in the urban areas during the same period.
The all India averages do not capture the wide variation across states and even within states. For example the India State Hunger Index 2008 (brought out by the International Food Policy Research Institute) shows very large differences across 17 major states, ranging from 13.6 for Punjab to 30.9 for Madhya Pradesh. If these states could be compared to countries ranked in the Global Hunger Index, Punjab would rank 34th and Madhya Pradesh would rank 82nd. However, few Indian states perform well in relation to the global index. Even the best-performing Indian state, Punjab, lies below 33 other developing countries ranked by the Global Hunger Index. The worst-performing states in India have index scores that would be at the bottom of the global rankings: Bihar and Jharkhand rank lower than Zimbabwe and Haiti, and Madhya Pradesh falls between Ethiopia and Chad.
What is especially significant in the IFPRI index is that the indicators of hunger do not always correspond to poverty ratios. For example, the lower incidence of income poverty in Gujarat and Karnataka is associated with worse performance in terms of hunger – and this is confirmed by calorie consumption data.
The recent rise in food prices in India is likely to have made matters much worse, and the effects of the global crisis on employment and livelihoods within the country are likely to cause further deterioration in people's access to food. Clearly, therefore, food security is currently one of the most important policy areas, and demands stressing a rights-based approach to public food strategy have gained ground. This is what underlies the current discussion around the legislation on the right to food, which has been put in the 100-day agenda of this UPA government.
The most loose definition of food security is one in which the population does not live in hunger or fear of starvation. But recent definitions have been more stringent. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), food security in a particular society exists "when all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life."
Such a definition appears to be simple, but is actually quite complex and begs many questions. What is ''sufficient''? How is access to be determined and provided? To what extent must food preferences be taken into account? All these questions become even more important when food security is sought to be converted into a legally justiciable right.
It is evident that genuine food security among a population requires a wide range of features, all or many of which are associated with the need for some public intervention. Ensuring adequate supplies of food requires increases in agricultural productivity, possibly changes in cropping patterns, and certainly the sustained viability of cultivation, all of would be necessary at both local and national levels. Making sure that food can be accessed by all the people requires that they have the purchasing power to buy the necessary food, which in turn means that employment, remuneration and livelihood issues are important. Social discrimination and exclusion still play unfortunately large roles in determining both livelihood and access to food by different social categories, and this too needs to be reckoned with.
Malnourishment is closely linked to poor sanitation and other unhealthy practices, so that the provision of clean drinking water, sanitation and access to other basic amenities, as well as knowledge about correct or desirable eating habits, are all necessary. Child malnutrition in India tends to be the worst at the age of 5 to 11 months, which suggests that breast-feeding and weaning behaviour matters – and this emphasises the need for society to educate mothers and to enable them to continue breast-feeding and shift to appropriate solids when required.
All of these issues must be addressed if the rampant problem of undernutrition has to be dealt with. But obviously most of these cannot easily be translated into legal provisions and so it is clear that a law, however well-intentioned and carefully phrased, can only address some of the complex factors that determine food insecurity. It is important for the government to be aware of the need for a multi-pronged approach to the problem that has to extend beyond a legal promise if it is to be successful.
This does not mean that a food security law would be meaningless: far from it. In fact, by focussing on universal food access and assigning responsibility and culpability, it would force the government at both central and state levels to take up the entire gamut of issues, which relate not just to actual food distribution but also to its production and patterns of consumption, so as to eventually ensure genuine food security.
The key point here is that such a law must guarantee universal access. The dominant failing of drafts of the proposed legislation that have been circulating in various quarters, is that they do not promise or even try to aim at universal food access. Instead, they tend to be obsessed with targeting food security to the Below Poverty Line (BPL) population and some defined vulnerable groups. Some drafts have gone even further, by suggesting that the non-BPL population be excluded entirely from any public distribution.
There is no question that poor and vulnerable groups have to be the focus of all public action to ensure food security. But making this a legal provision is likely to have exactly the opposite effect from what is intended, by actually reducing the access of such groups.
There are many reasons why these targeted schemes, and this one in particular, are unlikely to work. Most significant of all, there are the well known errors inherent in targeting, of unjustified exclusion of the genuinely poor and unwarranted inclusion of the non-poor. These are not simply mistakes that can occur in any administrative scheme, they are inbuilt into systems that try to provide scarce goods to one section of any population. In hierarchical and discriminatory societies like India, where social and economic power is unequally distributed, it requires no imagination to realise that making a scarce good (cheap food) supposedly available only to the poor is one of the easiest ways to reduce their access.
The second problem relates to the distinction between food insecurity and poverty as currently defined. It is evident from NSSO and NFHS surveys that the proportion of the population that is nutritionally deprived is significantly larger than the ''poor'' population, and in many states they are not completely overlapping categories either. To deal with food insecurity in an effective manner, it is counterproductive to base public food provision on a predefined group of the ''poor'', which would deprive a large number of others who are also food-insecure.
Part of the reason for this relates to the third problem, the absence of any notion of dynamics in a rigid law that defines ''poor'' and ''vulnerable'' households in a static sense and changes the group only at infrequent intervals. Households – and people within them – can fall in or out of poverty, however defined, because of changing material circumstances. Similarly they can also go from being food-secure to food-insecure in a short time. The reasons can vary: crop failures, sharp rises in the price of food, employment collapses, health issues that divert household spending, the accumulation of debt, and so on. Monitoring each and every household on a regular basis to check whether any of these or other features has caused it to become food-insecure is not just administratively difficult, it is actually impossible.
This is why all successful programmes of public food distribution, across societies, have been those that have gone in for universal or near universal access. This provides economies of scale; it reduces the transaction costs and administrative hassles involved in ascertaining the target group and making sure it reaches them; it allows for better public provision because even the better off groups with more political voice have a stake in making sure it works well; it generates greater stability in government plans for ensuring food production and procurement.
Even among the states of India, those states that have a better record of public food distribution are those that have gone in for near-universal access. Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh all have defined BPL in such an inclusive way that the vast majority of the population is included, which makes their schemes close to universal.
So an effective food security law must be universal and not targeted, and it must provide for enough food to meet nutrition requirements (both cereals and pulses) for every citizen. This also means that the entitlement must not be household based but individual based. Without these features, the law will not be able even to lay the grounds for genuine food security in the country.
Consider the evidence on nutritional outcomes from the most recent National Family Health Survey (NFHS) conducted in 2005-06. According to this, 46 per cent of children below 3 years are underweight; 33 per cent of women and 28 per cent of men have Body Mass Index (BMI) below normal; 79 per cent of children aged 6-35 months have anaemia, as do 56 per cent of ever married women aged 15-49 years and 24 per cent of similar men; 58 per cent of pregnant women have anaemia. The national averages mask locational differences: all these indicators are much worse in rural India.
Further, these indicators have scarcely changed, or have changed very little, since the previous NFHS in 1998-99. In terms of calorie consumption the picture is even worse. According to the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) large survey of 2004-05, the average daily intake of calories of the rural population has dropped by 106 Kcal (4.9 per cent) from 2153 Kcal to 2047 Kcal from 1993-94 to 2004-05 and by 51 Kcal (2.5 per cent) from 2071 to 2020 Kcal in urban areas. The average daily intake of protein by the Indian population decreased from 60.2 to 57 grams in rural India between 1993-94 and 2004-05 and remained stable at around 57 grams in the urban areas during the same period.
The all India averages do not capture the wide variation across states and even within states. For example the India State Hunger Index 2008 (brought out by the International Food Policy Research Institute) shows very large differences across 17 major states, ranging from 13.6 for Punjab to 30.9 for Madhya Pradesh. If these states could be compared to countries ranked in the Global Hunger Index, Punjab would rank 34th and Madhya Pradesh would rank 82nd. However, few Indian states perform well in relation to the global index. Even the best-performing Indian state, Punjab, lies below 33 other developing countries ranked by the Global Hunger Index. The worst-performing states in India have index scores that would be at the bottom of the global rankings: Bihar and Jharkhand rank lower than Zimbabwe and Haiti, and Madhya Pradesh falls between Ethiopia and Chad.
What is especially significant in the IFPRI index is that the indicators of hunger do not always correspond to poverty ratios. For example, the lower incidence of income poverty in Gujarat and Karnataka is associated with worse performance in terms of hunger – and this is confirmed by calorie consumption data.
The recent rise in food prices in India is likely to have made matters much worse, and the effects of the global crisis on employment and livelihoods within the country are likely to cause further deterioration in people's access to food. Clearly, therefore, food security is currently one of the most important policy areas, and demands stressing a rights-based approach to public food strategy have gained ground. This is what underlies the current discussion around the legislation on the right to food, which has been put in the 100-day agenda of this UPA government.
The most loose definition of food security is one in which the population does not live in hunger or fear of starvation. But recent definitions have been more stringent. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), food security in a particular society exists "when all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life."
Such a definition appears to be simple, but is actually quite complex and begs many questions. What is ''sufficient''? How is access to be determined and provided? To what extent must food preferences be taken into account? All these questions become even more important when food security is sought to be converted into a legally justiciable right.
It is evident that genuine food security among a population requires a wide range of features, all or many of which are associated with the need for some public intervention. Ensuring adequate supplies of food requires increases in agricultural productivity, possibly changes in cropping patterns, and certainly the sustained viability of cultivation, all of would be necessary at both local and national levels. Making sure that food can be accessed by all the people requires that they have the purchasing power to buy the necessary food, which in turn means that employment, remuneration and livelihood issues are important. Social discrimination and exclusion still play unfortunately large roles in determining both livelihood and access to food by different social categories, and this too needs to be reckoned with.
Malnourishment is closely linked to poor sanitation and other unhealthy practices, so that the provision of clean drinking water, sanitation and access to other basic amenities, as well as knowledge about correct or desirable eating habits, are all necessary. Child malnutrition in India tends to be the worst at the age of 5 to 11 months, which suggests that breast-feeding and weaning behaviour matters – and this emphasises the need for society to educate mothers and to enable them to continue breast-feeding and shift to appropriate solids when required.
All of these issues must be addressed if the rampant problem of undernutrition has to be dealt with. But obviously most of these cannot easily be translated into legal provisions and so it is clear that a law, however well-intentioned and carefully phrased, can only address some of the complex factors that determine food insecurity. It is important for the government to be aware of the need for a multi-pronged approach to the problem that has to extend beyond a legal promise if it is to be successful.
This does not mean that a food security law would be meaningless: far from it. In fact, by focussing on universal food access and assigning responsibility and culpability, it would force the government at both central and state levels to take up the entire gamut of issues, which relate not just to actual food distribution but also to its production and patterns of consumption, so as to eventually ensure genuine food security.
The key point here is that such a law must guarantee universal access. The dominant failing of drafts of the proposed legislation that have been circulating in various quarters, is that they do not promise or even try to aim at universal food access. Instead, they tend to be obsessed with targeting food security to the Below Poverty Line (BPL) population and some defined vulnerable groups. Some drafts have gone even further, by suggesting that the non-BPL population be excluded entirely from any public distribution.
There is no question that poor and vulnerable groups have to be the focus of all public action to ensure food security. But making this a legal provision is likely to have exactly the opposite effect from what is intended, by actually reducing the access of such groups.
There are many reasons why these targeted schemes, and this one in particular, are unlikely to work. Most significant of all, there are the well known errors inherent in targeting, of unjustified exclusion of the genuinely poor and unwarranted inclusion of the non-poor. These are not simply mistakes that can occur in any administrative scheme, they are inbuilt into systems that try to provide scarce goods to one section of any population. In hierarchical and discriminatory societies like India, where social and economic power is unequally distributed, it requires no imagination to realise that making a scarce good (cheap food) supposedly available only to the poor is one of the easiest ways to reduce their access.
The second problem relates to the distinction between food insecurity and poverty as currently defined. It is evident from NSSO and NFHS surveys that the proportion of the population that is nutritionally deprived is significantly larger than the ''poor'' population, and in many states they are not completely overlapping categories either. To deal with food insecurity in an effective manner, it is counterproductive to base public food provision on a predefined group of the ''poor'', which would deprive a large number of others who are also food-insecure.
Part of the reason for this relates to the third problem, the absence of any notion of dynamics in a rigid law that defines ''poor'' and ''vulnerable'' households in a static sense and changes the group only at infrequent intervals. Households – and people within them – can fall in or out of poverty, however defined, because of changing material circumstances. Similarly they can also go from being food-secure to food-insecure in a short time. The reasons can vary: crop failures, sharp rises in the price of food, employment collapses, health issues that divert household spending, the accumulation of debt, and so on. Monitoring each and every household on a regular basis to check whether any of these or other features has caused it to become food-insecure is not just administratively difficult, it is actually impossible.
This is why all successful programmes of public food distribution, across societies, have been those that have gone in for universal or near universal access. This provides economies of scale; it reduces the transaction costs and administrative hassles involved in ascertaining the target group and making sure it reaches them; it allows for better public provision because even the better off groups with more political voice have a stake in making sure it works well; it generates greater stability in government plans for ensuring food production and procurement.
Even among the states of India, those states that have a better record of public food distribution are those that have gone in for near-universal access. Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh all have defined BPL in such an inclusive way that the vast majority of the population is included, which makes their schemes close to universal.
So an effective food security law must be universal and not targeted, and it must provide for enough food to meet nutrition requirements (both cereals and pulses) for every citizen. This also means that the entitlement must not be household based but individual based. Without these features, the law will not be able even to lay the grounds for genuine food security in the country.
© MACROSCAN 2009