With over one billion people, and a large percentage of those people living in poverty, India faces a great challenge of providing food security to the entire population. Food is an essential basic need for all people and thus, must be accessible and affordable to all in order to prevent hunger, starvation, or malnutrition. In fact, chronic hunger and malnutrition rates in India are among the highest in the world (Swaminathan).
India suffered from severe food shortage in the 1960s. This inspired the Green Revolution which targeted increasing several specific crops including wheat. The revolution was successful at bringing India out of the shortage and the amount of food produced in India exceeded the population growth rate until the 1990s. However, economic liberalization in the 1990s caused food production to slow relative to population growth. Collapse of the rural credit system that occurred with economic liberalization was responsible for this. Decreases in tariffs and the elimination of restrictions on imports also caused prices to increase for producers in India. As a result, food security is once again an issue for India today (Swaminathan).
Some people believe that food security issues especially in a heavily populated country such as India are caused by a shortage of food due to high population growth. However, it is actually a matter of how the food is distributed and who controls the production of food that creates security issues rather than population growth as Madhura Swaminathan argues in his essay, Population and Food Security (Swaminathan).
Swaminathan states that there are two main issues that should be given priority for addressing the food security issues that India faces today. The first is to guarantee ample food production to meet the needs of the country’s large population. Because it is so large, Swaminathan argues that India cannot depend on trade for food but that domestic production should instead be the main insurer of adequate food for the population. The second issue that is important for India to address is hunger and malnutrition. Simply having enough food for the country is not adequate to eliminate these concerns. Without proper policies and programs, many people do not consume adequate amounts of food or quality food containing essential nutrients due to financial or physical inaccessibility (Swaminathan).
In their paper, Anatomy of a Global Food Crisis, Pedro Conceicao and Ronald Mendoza also discuss the importance of self-sufficiency in food production for a country. If a country has either a net food import or a net food export, it is vulnerable to changes in food prices. Low-income countries are particularly vulnerable to inflation in prices. These authors also state, as Swaminathan did, that merely having an abundance of food does not necessarily eliminate food security issues. Large amounts of food production do not address the issues related to food ownership and accessibility. Poverty, inequality, and financial crises intensify issues related to food ownership and accessibility. The poor are most vulnerable to consequences of inadequate food distribution policies (Conceicao & Mendoza, 2009).
One method to ensure access to food for all people is to have an active and functional public distribution system (PDS). In the past, the PDS was somewhat more effective but in recent years it has been exchanged for policy related to economic liberalization motives. The most recent PDS has not been successful because many people have been excluded, price inflation has not been controlled, and grain has been diverted elsewhere in some cases instead of making it to the consumer. Swaminathan suggests that universal PDS, which regulates prices and entitlements to all families, needs to be reinstituted (Swaminathan).
According to the National Commission on Farmers (NCF), public policy is vital to protect domestic farmers from increasing prices. Not only is it important to keep prices down for farmers, but it is important for consumers as well. In India, many rural families spend over half of their income on food already so inflation would place many households under serious hardships. Policy is also needed to improve research in the agricultural sector. Investment in the rural infrastructure and agriculture is crucial as well (Swaminathan). Conceicao and Mendoza also emphasize having policy coherence in order to solve food security issues (2009).
Despite the large population and the issues that India faces such as poverty, Swaminathan argues that the problem of food security can be feasibly achieved. He believes that self-sufficiency is key meaning that enough food must be produced domestically to provide for the amount of food needed for consumption in India. Public policy and investment are crucial for ensuring this self-sufficiency as well as preventing hunger and malnutrition. A functional public distribution system for India can play an important role in this as well (Swaminathan).
Conceicao, P. & Mendoza, R. (2009). Anatomy of the global food crisis. Third World Quarterly, 30 (6), 1159-1182.
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