The Government of Odisha is going to implement a food security programme under the National Food Security Act, 2013(NFSA) in phased manner by July 2015.
The NFSA speaks about access to adequate quantity of quality food as food and nutritional security to the people to live a life with dignity. The beneficiary selection has been a major challenge with the Government with increasing demand for inclusion of more numbers of households under different categories available in the State.
Along with food distribution, Article- 31, Scheduled-III, of the NFSA gives thrust on revitalization of agriculture by Central, State and local authorities to ensure food and nutritional security. It has been identified to bring agrarian reforms in the interest of small and marginal farmers as one of the most important steps along with other supports to increase food production in the direction of food security.
This provision is quite relevant for Odisha with huge poverty and having a large presence of small and marginal farmers who constitute about 83 per cent of total farming community.The current trends in the State witness a process of alienation of resources such as land, water and forest which are important as well as sustainable source of food security of the people in rural area.
The economic policy of the Government has been largely alienating people from resources, privatizing resources and commoditising resources of livelihood for profit by the corporate sector.
The essential food items have been slowly getting into the control of corporate and the State distribution system is limiting its role only to vulnerable groups and leaving a large majority of people in distress. land and water resources are diverted for non agricultural use in an alarming rate which is a matter of concern in the context of food security. The State policy has been very arbitrarily facilitating the process to make people assetless and on the other side, propagating food distribution programme for few vulnerable groups as food security.
The private corporate and business houses are allowed to take over the food market under the garb of Government control. There has been very little effort taken by the State to use the available land, water and human resources to increase the food production. Odisha’s dependency on neighbouring States for food items, fruits, vegetables, patato, onion, milk, fish, egg, wheat and meat product has been continuing.
The major agricultural land of the State remain unutilised due to frequent visit of flood and drought and a major part has problem of salinity, acidity, water logging. There are three lakh hectares of water logging area and four lakh hectares of land with salinity along with huge mining and industrial waste land without treatment.
The situation of vulnerable groups in rural areas is very frequently reported in media and also appearing in different study reports of the Government and non-Government organisations and international agencies are showing a disturbing picture with news of child selling for food, starvation deaths, and malnutrition of women, children, and food scarcity of people with disability, elderly people and people in remote rural and forest areas. Odisha still lags behind the national average in all nutrition based indicators and shows a very slow progress in comparison to other States.
The price of food items and vegetables has been consistently increasing in the market with dominating role of black marketers and hoarders during difficult situation. Food adulteration without enforcement of laws against the culprit has become a characteristic with State. The quality of rice, dal and flattened rice provided under Government schemes such as ICDS, MDM and PDS is always a matter of public complaint.
The public concerns and complaints are just undermined by the department concerned without any strong action against the people involved. There has been complaint of discrimination against people with social disability and other excluded groups while accessing food under different Government schemes. The bureaucratic control and fatly selection process have been depriving many genuine beneficiaries of food. The charity programmes implemented by the Government and propagated by international agencies and NGOs in the name of rights and entitlements for the poor have been very much helpful for the vote politics of ruling parties of a poor State.
Odisha has to be self- sufficient in food production by utilisation of its land, water and human resources without depending on others.The State has about 42 per cent of the total area as cultivable land and it has been decreasing with continuous diversion of agriculture land for non agricultural purposes due to industrialisation, mining and other projects.
It has been experienced that the small patch of land attached to poor families in rural villages is the main source of food security.
Without depending on Government or market forces for food, the rural poor should be encouraged to produce basic food items like rice, wheat, milk, egg, fish, meat, vegetables at local level. The food production at family level can be encouraged by the Government with plantation of trees like Sajana (drum stick tree), papaya, banana, cocoanut, and other seasonal vegetables, small poultry, dairy farms in their backyard which can bring both food security and solve the nutritional problem in rural villages among poor women and children.
The employment generating schemes like MGNREGS can be linked to the process of food production with land development and capital investment on irrigation and such other facilities like crop insurance, fair price to agro products, complimentary to agriculture development. The Panchyati Raj, Revenue and Agriculture departments have enough resources to make joint plan to improve the food production of the State.
But it is unfortunate that lakhs of rural poor families, landless agricultural workers, small and marginal farmers are getting detached from food production and are being forced to depend on Government charity and they are not being provided with productive assets for food production. The land, water and human resources remain unutilised.
The uneven land ownership pattern has been seriously affecting the agriculture production of the State. Historically land distribution and land settlement in are being diluted in the interest of land owning feudal class and by manipulating law and managing bureaucracy. The communities engaged in agriculture production have very insignificant presence in land ownership. The post independent land reform programme has not created desired impact in changing the land ownership pattern and land holding pattern in the State.
land should be available to each household, community, women self help group, cooperatives of small and marginal farmers and landless agricultural workers in rural areas with all other required support to increase food production. Women farmers should be encouraged with land and the production may be linked to the need of local consumption by ICDS, Agnganwadi, MDM in schools and ration for the elderly and disabled of the Panchyat.
Along with land reform as central to food security, the State Government should prohibit unwarranted diversion of land and water for non agricultural use. There should be access of rural poor to safe and adequate drinking water, sanitation, and health and education facilities, adequate position for elderly people, and people with disability which will compliment to strengthen food security in rural areas.
Along with prevention of hoarding and black marketing of essential commodities and control of the increasing price of essential food grains and vegetables, the State must develop a broad base plan of its own to ensure food security by making itself food sufficient and go beyond the debate of beneficiary selection under different criteria and the process of exclusion and inclusion.
The right to food should have provisions of universal access and wider reach of majority of people and it should be integrated with several related schemes to increase food production by rural household. The NFSA should be implemented in letter and spirit covering all its provisions and not just food distribution to a few.
(The writer is a rights activist who can be reached at ojaabbsr@gmail.com)