India’s Hunger Levels: Is it a Cause for concern?

Just a few weeks ago many of us saw advertisements published in most newspapers and television channels from the Ministry of Agriculture of India where union agriculture minister Mr. Sharad Pawar achievements of a RECORD HARVEST of all times in India was lauded. No Wheat Import This Year.

On September 12, 2008 the minister said; "there is no food shortage in the country this year as the stockpiles of commodities are currently at their highest levels". He said, the government has built an emergency reserve of 3.0 million tonnes of wheat from this year’s record harvest of 76.78 million tonnes. He said that all his efforts are to ameliorate the lot of the farmers, who can avoid distress sales by storing their produce in accredited warehouses! However, he forgot to mention the amount of food grains destroyed every year in the godowns of Food Corporation of India.! Ministers claims made me feel better that at least now there will not be any hunger death in this country and no farmer will commit suicide now. To add further to my happiness the government of India claimed that farm loan waiver has been a success.


My shortlived happiness was however consumed mercilessly by a report published by International Food Policy Research Institute Faces Urgent Hunger Situation on October 14th 2008.


Some of the key fact in that report are:


• India ranks 66 out of 88 countries on the 2008 Global Hunger Index (GHI).
• India is home to the world’s largest food insecure population, with more than 200 million people who are hungry.
• When compared to countries in the GHI, Indian states’ rankings would range from 34th (Punjab) to 82nd (Madhya Pradesh). This indicates substantial variability among states.
• All Indian states have at least a “serious” level of hunger; there is not a single state with low or even moderate levels.
• 12 states fall into the “alarming” category and one (Madhya Pradesh) is considered to have an “extremely alarming” level of hunger.
• India’s poor performance on the GHI is primarily due to its relatively high levels of child malnutrition and undernourishment resulting from calorie deficient diets.
• Indian hunger index scores are closely aligned with poverty, but there is little association with state-level economic growth; high levels of hunger are seen even in states that are performing well economically.
• Improving child nutrition is of utmost urgency in most Indian states because of its large contribution to the ISHI scores. All states also need to improve strategies to facilitate inclusive economic growth, ensure food sufficiency, and reduce child mortality.

Oblivious to these facts the learned minister claims of No shortage of Food Grain have been going on for several years and decades (ministers of different regimes). But the facts tell a different story.

The rate of growth of food grains production in India has decelerated to 1.2 % during 1990-2007, which is significantly lower than the 1.9 % annual rate of growth of population.

India is the world’s third largest food producer (after China and the US). India is also the world’s largest producer of milk; and second largest of rice, wheat, sugar and cotton as also fruits and vegetables. But there is catch in these statistics. What is more important is that how does this stats affect the 200 million hungry people in this country. The catch is per capita availability of food! Indeed, it may shock many that India’s per capita net availability of food grains today is lower than it was 15 years ago. Despite being a large producer of a range of food products, the per capita availability is one of the lowest. India produces approximately 200 million tonnes of food grains every year and still has 200 million hungry, with little or no food at all. A detailed report can be seen titled India faces Urgent Hunger Situation I am putting the summary of the first ever published hunger index report here.

Madhya Pradesh has the most severe level of hunger in the country, followed by Jharkhand and Bihar.

The India State Hunger Index measures hunger on three leading indicators and combines them into one index. The three indicators are prevalence of child malnutrition, rates of child mortality, and the proportion of people who are calorie deficient. This approach is similar to the 2008 Global Hunger Index, which includes India, and is also being released today for World Food Day (October 16) by IFPRI in conjunction with Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide. The India Hunger Index found that not a single state in India falls in the 'low hunger' or 'moderate hunger' categories. Twelve states fall in the 'alarming' category, and one state—Madhya Pradesh—falls in the 'extremely alarming' category. Four states—Punjab, Kerala, Haryana and Assam—fall in the 'serious' category. "This new state-focused index is an important advocacy tool to build awareness of the disparities in hunger across India, which has more hungry people than any other country in the world." According to the 2008 Global Hunger Index, India ranks 66 out of 88 nations (developing countries and countries in transition). Despite years of robust economic growth, India scored worse than nearly 25 Sub-Saharan African countries and all of South Asia, except Bangladesh.

India's slightly better performance relative to Bangladesh is entirely due to better access to food in India relative to Bangladesh, which in turn is a consequence of India's higher agricultural productivity. On the other two components of the Global Hunger Index—child underweight and child mortality—India ranks below Bangladesh. When Indian states are compared to countries in the 2008 Global Hunger Index, Madhya Pradesh ranks between Ethiopia and Chad. Punjab, the best-performing state, ranks below Gabon, Honduras, and Vietnam. Its rates of child malnutrition are higher than most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

"Hunger and malnutrition are often rooted in poverty," and part of the solution rests with increasing investments in agriculture and poverty reduction programs. Child underweight accounts for the greatest contribution to the India State Hunger Index for almost all states, followed by calorie deficiency and child mortality. In a few states, such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu, calorie deficiency contributes almost as much as child underweight.

Country-level Trends

• India, Yemen, and Timor-Leste, have the highest prevalence of underweight children (a measure of malnutrition) of more than 40 percent.

Malnutrition, poverty are inextricably linked. In my next publication "Why we are, What we are" I will discuss the issue of "corruption and poverty in India" on the basis of the report published by Transparency International"