In the recently released Global Hunger Index (GHI)-2023, India has ranked at 111th position out of 125 countries where as in 2022, it was ranked at 107th position out of 121 countries. According to the report, in the global context, there has been rising cases of undernourishment since 2017.
Undernourishment is considered as one of the important indicators used in the calculation of GHI scores which has been increasing from 572 million to about 735 million within five years. According to the GHI report, climate change, varieties of conflicts, economic crisis, global pandemic and Russia-Ukraine war have widened both the social and economic inequalities and
slowed down progress in reducing hunger in many countries.
Though GHI is considered as a tool for comprehensively measuring and tracking hunger at global, national and regional levels but the Government of India has rejected the report and stated that, the index was a flawed measure of "hunger" and did not reflect India's true position. While rejecting the report, the Women and Child Development Ministry has said that the index suffers from "serious methodological issues and shows a malafide intent."
In India, after the independence till date different Governments have been adopting different policies on food securities from time to time with the broad objectives of ensuring the availability of food grains to the common people at an affordable price, providing subsidized food grains through public distribution system, fixing up the support price for procurement price of food grains and balancing the stock by restricting the import and export policy.
To achieve the objectives the responsibilities have been bestowed on both the Civil Supplies and the Agriculture departments. The FAO understands food security as availability of food for all at all times; that all persons have means of access to it; that it is mutually adequate in terms of quantity, quality and variety; and that it is acceptable within the given culture only when all these conditions are in place can a population be considered ‘food secure’. So mere supplying of food is not important but maintaining the balance is a top most priority.
While supplementing the inputs to measure the nutritional aspect of India, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) finalised it as the 1,632 Kilo calorie per day in 2008. The indicators laid by it are prevalence of calorie under nourishment, proportion of underweight children and under five mortality rate.
The mismatch between two important categories of consumers; BPL and APL has made the problem more complex. It has been founded that, many BPL families are placed in APL list and the vice versa. The NRLM and NULM projects have been distributing funds for different income generation programmes. Due to faulty monitoring mechanisms, people spend it for other day- to- day needs instead of their means of livelihood. Due to lack of motivation people are not so much interested to procure livelihood inputs but are very much kin to avail the subsidies.
To reduce the fiscal deficit, the Government has been restricting the subsidies on the petroleum price, which also affects the agricultural output. On the other hand, the unregulated markets have been a cause for price hike. For this reason, the traders are benefited but the farmers' financial status has not improved.
To get rid of such important issue, the farmers should be encouraged to produce minimum quantities of staple foods and practise the need based production so that proper pricing of the products could be possible. The agricultural economy should get equal status along with the manufacturing and service units. For this, food processing units should be developed to attract the educated masses towards agriculture. To bring the tribes to the mainstream of social life and save them from exploitation and provide them food security, the implementation of PESA should be functional in the right sense.
The Pallisabhas and Gram Sabhas should be held on regular basis to know the grassroots reality and formulation and implementation of different income generation programmes. On the other hand, those should function as a forum for the formulation of Micro Level Planning by looking at the locally available resources and maintaining the transparency. A balance between production, storage and distribution of food grains should be maintained so that the country would be free from hunger. Besides there is also the need of adequate measurement at all levels of the food chain and food system for the sustainability of production, distribution, consumption and waste management.
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