Food Security in India
Food security in India
The focus on accelerated foodgrains production on a sustainable basis and free trade in grains would help create massive employment and reduce the incidence of poverty in rural areas.
INDIA AT present finds itself in the midst of a paradoxical situation: endemic mass-hunger coexisting with the mounting foodgrain stocks. The foodgrain stocks available with the Food Corporation of India (FCI) stand at an all time high of 62 million tonnes against an annual requirement of around 20 million tonnes for ensuring food security. Still, an estimated 200 million people are underfed and 50 million on the brink of starvation, resulting in starvation deaths. The paradox lies in the inherent flaws in the existing policy and implementation bottlenecks.
Challenges ahead
India's food security policy has a laudable objective to ensure availability of foodgrains to the common people at an affordable price and it has enabled the poor to have access to food where none existed. The policy has focused essentially on growth in agriculture production (once India used to import foodgrains) and on support price for procurement and maintenance of rice and wheat stocks. The responsibility for procuring and stocking of foodgrains lies with the FCI and for distribution with the public distribution system (PDS).
Minimum support price: The FCI procures foodgrains from the farmers at the government announced minimum support price (MSP). The MSP should ideally be at a level where the procurement by FCI and the offtake from it are balanced. However, under continuous pressure from the powerful farmers lobby, the government has been raising the MSP and it has now become higher than what the market offers to the farmers. Also, with quality norms in the procured grains not strictly observed, farmers pressurise the FCI to procure grains beyond its procurement target and carrying capacity. The MSP has now become more of a procurement price rather than being a support
The focus on accelerated foodgrains production on a sustainable basis and free trade in grains would help create massive employment and reduce the incidence of poverty in rural areas.
INDIA AT present finds itself in the midst of a paradoxical situation: endemic mass-hunger coexisting with the mounting foodgrain stocks. The foodgrain stocks available with the Food Corporation of India (FCI) stand at an all time high of 62 million tonnes against an annual requirement of around 20 million tonnes for ensuring food security. Still, an estimated 200 million people are underfed and 50 million on the brink of starvation, resulting in starvation deaths. The paradox lies in the inherent flaws in the existing policy and implementation bottlenecks.
Challenges ahead
India's food security policy has a laudable objective to ensure availability of foodgrains to the common people at an affordable price and it has enabled the poor to have access to food where none existed. The policy has focused essentially on growth in agriculture production (once India used to import foodgrains) and on support price for procurement and maintenance of rice and wheat stocks. The responsibility for procuring and stocking of foodgrains lies with the FCI and for distribution with the public distribution system (PDS).
Minimum support price: The FCI procures foodgrains from the farmers at the government announced minimum support price (MSP). The MSP should ideally be at a level where the procurement by FCI and the offtake from it are balanced. However, under continuous pressure from the powerful farmers lobby, the government has been raising the MSP and it has now become higher than what the market offers to the farmers. Also, with quality norms in the procured grains not strictly observed, farmers pressurise the FCI to procure grains beyond its procurement target and carrying capacity. The MSP has now become more of a procurement price rather than being a support