Food security has been a major concern in India still today. Evaluate how far successive governments have progressed in dealing with such humongous problem. Also Suggest measures for improvement. (200 words)
Refer – The Hindu
Enrich the answer from other sources, if the question demands.
IAS Parliament 6 years
KEY POINTS
· Our current understanding of food security includes four dimensions
1. Availability
2. Access
3. Utilisation
4. Stability
· The years post-Independence were turbulent for India. Food shortage was rampant.
· Hunger was thought to be a function of inadequate food production which resulted in Green Revolution to boost food production.
· It was realised later that India’s focus on increasing food supplies was falling short of actually ameliorating hunger.
· In spite of ample quantities of grain, and a variety of government efforts such as the Public Distribution System, people were dying of starvation because they were unable to physically or financially (or both) reach this food.
· This focus on access culminated in India in a 2001 case, in which the Supreme Court evolved a right to food and read it into the right to life provisions of the Constitution.
· Following that, a host of court orders and directions ultimately resulted in the 2013 National Food Security Act (NFSA).
NFSA
· However, the NFSA suffers from serious lacunae in its drafting, which severely undermine its stated objective of giving legal form to the right to food in India.
· The NFSA surprisingly does not guarantee a universal right to food. Instead, it limits the right to food to those identified on the basis of certain criteria.
· It then goes on to further restrict the right to 75% of the Indian population.
· It also specifies that a claim under the Act would not be available in times of “war, flood, drought, fire, cyclone or earthquake”.
· Given that a right to food becomes most valuable in exactly these circumstances, it is questionable whether the Act is effective in guaranteeing the right that it is meant to.
· Given that the NFSA predominantly mentions just rice and wheat, and that too for only some citizens, this has worrying implications.
· Finally, while the NFSA addresses issues of access, availability and, even tangentially, utilisation, it is largely silent on the issue of stability of food supplies.
Way Ahead
· Thus, there is a need to frame a “third generation” food security law and recognise issues including increasing natural disasters and climate adaptation.
· Such a framework would robustly address the challenges facing the country’s food security across all four dimensions and make a coordinated effort to resolve them.
