Here is a story that you won’t hear about on television news media – the fact that over a sixth of Indiais permanently hungry and undernourished. That is almost 190 million people who go to sleep on a hungry stomach on most days. Over a third of the children under the age of 5, show the prevalence of stunting. Yet, the way corporatized media covers the news, you would think we are a nation without either poverty or hunger.
The 2020 Global Hunger Index was released last week, and India’s ranking is abysmal. The worst performing country in the region, India has been slipping up in the combatting of hunger over the last 15 years. In 2006 India’s score was 37.5, by 2012 it had slipped to 29.3. And now it has dropped to 27.2. The index describes India’s hunger problem as “serious”
Despite food surpluses, more Indians are going hungry today, compared to the beginning of the century. And that does not augur well for our ambitions of being seen as developed, with a seat at the high table with world leaders.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 2019 saw a worldwide rise in hunger, that began in 2014 and has been gradually creeping up – with there being 60 million more hungry people in 2019, than there were in 2014. Of these, 10 million were added between 2018 and 2019. Hunger is a real problem with the need for real solutions.
There are many reasons for this rise in hunger – primary among them is the extent of conflict in the world, and the impact of climate change and its impact on agriculture. The FAO, concludes, rather sadly, that the world is not on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of zero hunger by 2030.
Like elsewhere, in India the issue of hunger makes the marginalised communities even more marginalised. According to the Global Hunger Index, poverty and hunger affects a disproportionate number of Dalit and Adivasi people. One in two children in tribal households is stunted, and the prevalence of stunting amongst girls is twice as high as it is for boys.
The Global Hunger Index Report is yet to calculate the impact of COVID on hunger. That figure will emerge next year and is likely to show how marginalised communities worldwide have become even more marginalised. According to the FAO, “the COVID-19 pandemic may add between 83 and 132 million people to the total number of undernourished in the world in 2020 “
India is just opening up after COVID. It has been a long hard seven months, with people most impacted being the ones who didn’t have much to start with. Across the country we heard stories of migrant labour walking back, because they slipped through the systemic nets which would allow for food aid to get through. For many school going children across India, the lockdown due to COVD meant they went hungry. Earlier, they would at least get the mid-day meal.
Hunger will not be combatted without a strategy. Just as a newly independent India resolved to be food secure in a few decades and put in plans to ensure that it was achieved; a modern Indian government needs plans to tackle hunger. It is not that the Modi government does not have vision or ideas – it is that they seem to be collectively happy with the idea of the idea, and not really bothered about seeing it implemented successfully. Right now, we have a twin problem of excess supply of food grains (flagged by the RBI), and an excess number of very hungry people. There seems to be something fundamentally flawed with a system that allows the pile up of food at one end and ignores the hunger of almost 200 million people at the other.
Our problem is not the lack of food. Our problem is the lack of access to food for millions. To achieve this food distribution has to be decentralised. According to Amartya Sen, the situation vis-à-vis food and hunger in India is not improving because “our delivery systems are worst, unaccountable and non-responsive towards the most marginalized like children”. And unless there is fixed it will be impossible to address hunger.
It is not difficult to end hunger in India. It is not like we don’t have the food to feed the hungry. What we don’t have is the political will that drives a zero-hunger policy. Unless politicians feel as strongly about children dying of hunger, as they do about statues and pride – you are not going to see any improvement in the situation.