OCTOBER 16, WORLD FOOD DAY: MAKING INDIA FREE FROM HUNGER

Every year some parts of India witness droughts and floods directly impacting on food output. India experienced two drought years [July2014-June15 & 2015-16] impacting on low food output followed by 2016-17, a year of severe floods. As 36th World Food Day (WFD) will be observed on 16th October, 2016 India can size and capitalize this opportunity to redouble its efforts in creating awareness among all stakeholders by mounting a massive campaign to improve crop productivity per unit area and resources and eliminate hunger, poverty and rural unemployment. India could not achieve Millennium Development Goal-1 to half the percentage of hungry people by 2015. It has now committed to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal-2 target to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture” by 2030. In this context, this development perspective article highlights the current Indian scenario and suggests specific aspects to achieve the SDG-Goal 2 and make India free from hunger by 2030.


WORLD FOOD DAY
Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO] of the United Nations was established on 16 th October 1945 with a mandate "to raise levels of nutrition, improve agricultural productivity, better the lives of rural populations and contribute to the growth of the world economy." The FAO in order to fulfil this mandate has been putting in concerted efforts to achieve food security for all and make sure people have regular access to adequate and better quality food that can help them lead active and healthy lives. Over the period, the FAO has become the reservoir of knowledge about food, agriculture and natural resources which it shares among its member countries. Dr. Pal Romany, the former Hungarian Minister of Agriculture & Food suggested at the 20 th session of the FAO conference in November 1979 to observe the World Food Day [WFD] worldwide. Member countries of the FAO endorsed this and proclaimed to observe 16 th October each year as WFD to mark the date of establishing the FAO in 1945. The WFD aims at continuously heightening public awareness of the world food problem and strengthen solidarity in the struggle against hunger, malnutrition and poverty. Accordingly, acknowledging that "food is a requisite for human survival and well-being and a fundamental human necessity" the General Assembly on 5 th December 1980 endorsed observance of the WFD.
Beginning from 1981 with the theme "Food Comes First" more than 150 countries observe the WFD every year with specific theme that sharply focus the issues responsible for poverty, malnutrition and hunger; identify the areas that need specific actions; and initiate policies, programs and strategic action plans to minimize the incidence. The WFD provides a common focus to help share knowledge and experiences among countries to achieve the expected goals. Most of the themes of WFD highlight areas that need actions focusing adequate and continuous investment in agriculture. The bulk of that investment will have to be sourced from the private sector, with public investment playing a critical role, especially in view of its facilitating and stimulating effect on private investment.

MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOAL-1
Achievement of eight Millennium Development Goals [MDG] with a set of measurable timebound targets by 2015 was a pledge by all member-states of the United Nations including India to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity, and free the world from hunger and poverty. Goal-1 of the MDG had target to halve the proportion of poverty and hunger by 2015. However, India could not seize & capitalize this opportunity to provide social protection net [a viable alternative for stimulating agricultural production] which has the potential to reduce chronic food insecurity by ensuring direct access to food or the means to buy food. Now the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal-2 targets to "end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture" by 2030.
India while observing the World Food Day each year should review the outcome and impact of all policies and programs so far introduced, more particularly in previous year and formulate the strategic action plan to make India food secure and achieve" Zero Hunger" by 2030, since it could not achieve the MDG-1 in 2015 to halve the percentage of hungry people of that in 2000. In the context of October 16 th 2016 being the 36 th World Food Day, this article briefly highlights the Indian scenario, constraining factors and suggests specific aspects to make India, Zero Hunger.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL-2
The member-countries of the United Nations have agreed to achieve 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 of which the SDG-2 reiterates "to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture". FAO has stated, "Agricultural production must increase by 60% globally to feed 9.2 billion people by2050 and India by 100%". This necessitates sustainable, equitable and inclusive solutions in the agricultural sector. Farmers, more importantly small, marginal and women farmers, as producers of food need to be involved, encouraged and incentivized to find specific remedies that address issues affecting food and nutritional security viz. sustainable production, availability, accessibility, affordability and assimilation. In this process, farmers need infrastructure that sustains the productivity, production and profitability of small farms in particular i.e. they need to be facilitated to hassle-free access to scientific knowledge, innovations, production inputs, irrigation, credit, insurance, remunerative markets, among others.

CAUSES, MAGNITUDE AND CONSEQUENCES OF HUNGER
FAO, World Food Program and International Fund for Agricultural Development define undernourishment, or hunger, in the State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012 report as "food intake that is insufficient to meet dietary energy requirements continuously". According to their report economic recovery, especially in the agriculture sector, will be crucial for sustained hunger reduction. The factors inhibiting agricultural growth include growing biofuel demand, financial speculation in food commodity markets and inefficiencies in food supply and distribution which lead to almost a third of total production being wasted.
Poverty has been often attributed to be the root cause of hunger and malnutrition as poor people do not have sufficient money to buy adequate quantities of healthy food despite food is available. Although food insecurity is primarily a structural problem affecting rural regions, it is exacerbated by natural disasters, political crises and conflicts. At least 40 countries are considered fragile. While stable political stability and good governance are responsible to minimize the incidence of hunger, the percentage share of hungry people as a result of fragility and conflict is increasing.
More than 800 million people worldwide are still chronically hungry. At least a billion more suffer from hidden hunger, malnutrition caused by a diet deficient in vital nutrients. In other words, a little less than two billion people cannot access the quality and amount of food for a healthy and productive life in dignity. Hunger and poor nutrition kill around 8,000 children each day accounting for about 50% of all child deaths worldwide. Hunger is the greatest risk to health, claiming more lives each year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.
Hunger is a major obstacle for human development and the country. It leads to migration and expulsion, conflict and violence, a lack of economic prospects and hopelessness. No other human right is violated as often as the right to food. This violation of human rights and dignity is one of the worst scandals of our modern world. It mainly affects rural areas being home to three quarters of the world's hungry, where there is a lack of employment and incomes leading to abysmal poverty.
Faced with learning difficulties and limited employment opportunities as they grow older, they often face a life of poverty. This scenario demonstrates that the problem is not only serious and acute but also multi-faceted. It is not just a lack of enough food but also the right kind of food accompanied by clean drinking water, better sanitation, knowledge about nutrition in particular. Malnutrition's economic costs to an individual and a country are substantial. Ending child under- nutrition could increase a developing country's GDP by 16.5%. Improving nutrition should, therefore, be perceived as an issue of human rights, economics and national growth rather than a welfare issue. When chronic malnutrition cannot generally be reversed, prevention is the only cure.

ZERO HUNGER
"Zero Hunger" was first proposed at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Brazil in June 2012. According to the United Nations' Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "zero hunger aims for a future where every individual has adequate nutrition".In fact, the FAO in 1974 had declared that by 1984 " no child, woman or man should go to bed hungry and no human being's physical or mental potential should be stunted by malnutrition". Our former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh had reemphasized in his Independence Day Address that "nobody will be allowed to go hungry". Zero hunger is a challenge that India has necessarily to meet not only for its own people but there cannot be a hunger-free world without India making a significant breakthrough.

INDIAN SCENARIO
As a signatory to the historic MDGs adopted at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2000, India is committed to end the hunger. However, India is unable to achieve the target to halve the proportion of hungry people by 2015 and was likely to reduce the percentage of underweight children below 3 years of age to 33% by 2015 as against 26% [half of what it was in 1990].India has reduced the proportion of hungry people by about 35% since 1990 but nevertheless India has still 190 million hungry people. India still remains home to one quarter of world's undernourished population, over a third of world's underweight children and nearly a third of world's food-insecure people. Not getting enough food or not getting the right kind of food causes malnutrition. India continues to have one of every three malnourished children in the world. An indicator for chronic malnutrition is stunting, wherein an individual has low height for his/her age. Almost half of the children in India under the age of five are stunted. Deficiencies in essential nutrients are unacceptably high across income levels in India. According to the latest Global Hunger Report, India continues to be among nations where hunger is "alarming". According to the Global Hunger Index [GHI], though country's GHI improved in 23 years from 32.6 in 1990 to 21.3 in 2013, India ranks 63 out of 78 countries having the worst GHI. Most disappointing fact is that India ranks much below some South Asian countries, viz. Sri Lanka (43), Nepal (49), Pakistan (57) and Bangladesh (58). The persisting low level of anthropometric indicators of nutrition in India, for both adults and children even in the midst of intensified interventions for poverty-alleviation, is a cause of serious concern. Intake of dietary energy per person is the most widely accepted indicator of the level of nutrition of the population.  Drought: Indian sub-continent is predominantly characterized by a tropical monsoon climate and entire region is distinguished mainly by the differences in rainfall in terms of onset, distribution, quantity and withdrawal. While south-west monsoon accounts for 80% and northeast 20% of rainfall there is a large variability in the monsoon rainfall on both space and time scales. Only 63 million hectares [45%] of net cropped area is irrigated. Consequently, some parts of the country experience drought or flood almost every year. In past, country experienced 24 large-scale droughts viz. in 1891, 1896,1899,1905,1911,1915,1918,1920,1941,1951,  1966,1972,1974,1979,1982,1986,1987,1988,1999,2000,2002,2009

POTENTIAL OF INFORMATION & COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
By June, 2014, rural India had about 122.4 million [68.32%] households with mobiles exhibiting mobile connectivity has become a basic service in rural areas. Rural mobile subscriber base is growing twice as faster compared to urban subscriber base. As of March 2015, the national teledensity was 79% and rural teledensity 46.5%. Telecom Policy aims to increase rural teledensity to 60% by 2017 and 100% by 2020.Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has the potential to revolutionize Indian agriculture in terms of raising crop productivity and profitability per unit area and resources. Several apps are now available and many more can be developed which can help farmers access authentic, accurate and timely information related to high-yielding variety seeds, production-enhancing and cost-minimizing farming practices, efficient use of water including micro-irrigation system, integrated nutrient and pest management, post-harvest management practices, measures to mitigate adverse impact of climate change and marketing of farm produce in domestic and international markets. In public-privatepartnership mode following farmer-friendly farm portals can be developed and farmers incentivized for their use.  Irrigation: Strategic actions to resolve following serious issues are necessary in order to ensure that share of food output under irrigated farming increases to 75% from 56% by 2016-17.  Incomplete projects: There has been an increase in the number of incomplete projects awaiting completion since the end of IV Plan. The backlog has remained between 500 and 600 projects since then. The backlog declined at the end of VII Plan but increased again to the present level. Currently, there are 557 irrigation projects yet to be completed. Andhra Pradesh has completed only 17 projects out of the allotted 105 projects, followed by The high food prices/ food inflation in the country can partly be attributed to these high wastage rates. High food inflation impacts considerably the poor since food accounts for 31% of their average monthly household expenditure. Major factors responsible for wastage of perishable food include, inter alia, viz. absence of modern supply chains that can efficiently link the food grown by farmers to consumers, lack of adequate financial investments in cold storages and refrigerated vans, erratic electricity supply, poor road connectivity and lack of investmentfriendly policies that discourage the private sector to invest in creating this infrastructure. According to the IIM, Kolkata, country has estimated cold storage facilities for only about 10% perishable food products and the pressing need is for another 370 MT of cold storage facilities for perishable products. Gross mismanagement of the FCI to store wheat and rice has rendered FCI itself a part of the problem rather than a solution. Even the former Food Minister K V Thomas had once described FCI as a "white elephant that needs to be revamped from top to bottom." This transformation, however, never happened. Mr Thomas, also, led a delegation to China to study the China's impressive system of food production, procurement, storage and handling food-grains which could have been evaluated, modified and emulated to suit to our situation. Even, this should be done now. Now, the recommendations of the Shantakumar Committee on FCI[2014-15] on restructuring, among others, should be forthwith discussed, debated and implemented. The Government spends nearly 1% of its GDP for its totally mismanaged public food distribution system. While cost of food production, procurement, transport, storage and distribution has significantly increased, inefficient food management system has resulted into huge wastage, pilferages and deterioration in food quality, not even acceptable as cattle-feed. The Independent Evaluation Office reveals that Government spends Rs.3.65 to deliver Re 1 of food while 57% of subsidized food-grains do not reach the intended beneficiaries and close to 36% of food-grains are siphoned off in the supply chain. According to one expert grains trade analyst, grains procured @ Rs. 13