Why Is a Food Surplus Nation Suffering from Hunger?

The Global Hunger Index (GHI) for October, 2023 has been released. India has ranked 111th out of 125 countries assessed by the index in terms of levels of hunger indicating a serious situation for the country. With a score of 28.7, India has reported a level of hunger that has been termed as serious by the GHI. While Pakistan (102nd) fares better than India in terms of its position in the GHI, 2023, other neighbouring countries such as Bangladesh (81st), Nepal (69th) and Srilanka (60th) gain much higher position than India.
The Global Hunger Index is an assessment of hunger worldwide brought out by Concern Worldwide and Welt Hunger Hilfe, non-governmental organisations from Ireland and Germany respectively. The index uses four indicators to assess levels of hunger. The indicators are undernourishment (insufficient calorie intake), child stunting, child wasting and child mortality rate.
The trends in Global Hunger Index indicate that at a global level progress made in mitigating hunger has staggered since 2015. From the perspective of India, our situation in the level of hunger has remained serious since the last few years. In 2022, India ranked 107 out of 121 countries, in 2021 India ranked 101 out of 116 countries, in 2020 India ranked 94th out of 107 countries. Matter of specific concern for India is that the percentage of child wasting and undernourishment has increased in India since 2015 according to GHI score. There is a clear trend that the situation of India in terms of mitigating hunger has worsened since 2015. Needless to say, this period coincides with the NDA 2 regime in India led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This is also a period of Indian government’s increased muscle flexing in claiming the status of world super power by making India a 5 trillion dollar economy by 2024-25. Earlier in October, the Indian government showcased its claimed ‘status’ in the international scenario by holding the G20 in India that was preceded by massive demolition and displacement of urban poor across Indian cities.
Rather than being alarmed by India’s situation in mitigating hunger, the Indian government has as usual termed the findings of the GHI as flawed. The government argues that three of the four indicators used in GHI relate to nutritional status of children and thus are not representative of the entire population. One wonders, does anyone really need to remind the Ministry of Women and Children Development that children are the future of the nation and malnutrition in children is symptomatic of a society that can not feed its children enough to be able to develop as healthy citizens? It is important to mention here that it is the same government that has refused to release data of the consumer expenditure survey done by NSSO in 2017-18. Consumer expenditure survey by NSSO provides data for household expenditure on food items. The last available data of consumer expenditure is that of June 2012. While the findings of global hunger index were rejected terming it as a plot to malign India’s image, the findings of 75th round of NSSO on consumer expenditure was withheld by the government showing the issue of data quality. Reports indicated that the findings of NSSO showed a dip in consumer expenditure for the first time in the last forty years. One is reminded how the data on employment by NSSO that showed the highest rate of unemployment in the last 45 years was also withheld by the Modi government.
If we look at other sources of information such as the findings of NFHS-5 that provides data for health and nutrition in India for 2019-21, the percentage of stunted, wasted, underweight and anaemic children in India is 36%, 19%, 32% and 67%, respectively. While the percentage of stunted, wasted and underweight children has shown some progress despite the present rate being quite high, the percentage of children suffering from anaemia has increased since 2015 according to NFHS. Another study by Jean Dreze and others has shown that the decline in infant mortality rate had slowed down in India in 2017-18. The decline has halted in urban areas and has even shown a reversal in many states.
Why Is a Food Surplus Nation Like India Suffering from Mal-Nutrition
India right now is not merely known as being self-sufficient in food production, but a surplus producing nation. It is indeed tragic that the children of a country that produces surplus food are suffering from undernutrition. The question thus is not availability of food, but access to it.
Focus on self-sufficiency in food production as well as universal public distribution system to make food accessible to the vast majority of India’s population were the strategies adopted by a newly independent nation. Public Distribution System (PDS) evolved as a mechanism to address food shortage faced by a vast section of Indians in the 1960s. With the introduction of neo-liberal policy regime, rather than further strengthening the PDS, the Government of India introduced Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) in 1997 dividing the population in Below Poverty Level and Above Poverty Level. Wheat, rice, sugar and kerosene were meant to be distributed at subsidized rate to people below poverty line through the targeted public distribution system. Subsequently all sorts of machinations to define poverty and under-report people below poverty line started. The left from the beginning has been consistently saying that a targeted public distribution system is less about focusing on the poor and more about excluding the poor from accessing the PDS. The mechanism involved in availing a BPL card to access food will in the process exclude those who are in the most need of it. Utsa Patnaik has shown that between 1998-2003, just after the introduction of the Targeted Public Distribution System, the per capita food grain absorption for the population of India had sharply declined .
The National Food Security Act passed in 2013 further institutionalised the system of targeted public distribution system. While the act was passed after years of struggle by the activists for right to food, its shortcomings were most evident during the nationwide lockdown between 2019-20. The nation was witness to the hardships of millions of informal workers in the urban areas. Thousands of workers left the cities defying lockdown norms, lack of access to food being one of the primary reasons. According to official estimates, 54 lakh people who did not have ration cards availed for e coupons issued during the phase of lockdown during April-May, 2020 in Delhi. Despite the process of availing e coupons being complex and difficult for the poor, such a large number of people opted for it.  The government made no subsequent effort to issue ration cards to those who availed e coupon during lockdown. While the government claims 75% of rural population and 50% of urban population are covered under NFSA, the fact remains that the cap for present NFSA coverage is based on the 2011 census. Since the census of 2021 has not been conducted yet, the exclusion under NFSA is being shamelessly allowed by the government of India. Moreover, distribution under NFSA is restricted to cereals and does not include other sources of nutrition such as pulses or vegetables. One kilogram of pulses was promised merely to deal with the urgent crisis induced by lockdown. Prominent agriculturalists have time and again demanded inclusion of pulses under the scope of NFSA, but with no heed from the government. Soaring food price inflation further worsens the problem of gap in population and nutritional coverage of the NFSA. In the absence of universal PDS people of India are kept dependent on the vagaries of food price inflation. They are left to deal with soaring food prices while country’s unemployment rate is breaking all past records. While the price of essential food items such as wheat increased by 25%, rice by 10% and egg and milk by 9% in 2023 as compared to 2022, real wages of workers have shown insignificant increase in the past few years. According to estimates provided by Jean Dreze and others the growth rate of real wages between 2014-15 and 2021-22 was below 1 per cent per year across the board.  It was 0.9 per cent for agricultural labour, 0.2 per cent for construction workers and and 0.3 per cent for non agricultural labour.  
Undernourishment of India’s children and population is clearly not a matter of concern for the present Modi regime. The farmers of the country have long been demanding guaranteed MSP for 23 major crops. Ensuring MSP for farmers, strengthening of public procurement and universalisation of PDS with inclusion of nutritional elements such as pulses and other vegetables may seem to be a far cry, but is the only solution if India really wants to strengthen its global position. n