Global Thinker Award 2007

Full Speech of Prof. MS Swaminathan

‘To a people famishing and idle, the only acceptable form in which God can dare appear is work and promise of food as wages’ — Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

The Situation in India today

• The Mid-term appraisal of the Tenth Plan reveals that we are lagging behind in achieving the Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger by 2015. India is the home of the largest population of malnourished people in the world.

• In 1999-2000, almost 77 per cent of the rural population consumed less than the poverty line calorie requirement of 2,400 Kcal.


• The average calorie intake in 2004-05 across the eight States of Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Maharashtra and West Bengal was only 1907 Kcal as per provisional data released by the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau (NNMB), indicating a declining trend.

Need for a Strategy for Food Security:

We need to move from the con­cept of food security at the aggregate level (i.e. million tonnes of food-grains needed to feed the population) to nutrition security at the level of every individual.

The concept of food and nutrition security implies that :

i) Eevery individual has the physical, economic, social and environmental access to a balanced diet. This includes the necessary macro- and micro-nutrients, safe drinking water, san­itation, environmental hygiene.

Transient hunger caused by sea­sonal fluctuations in food availabil­ity and disruptions in communica­tion and transport arising from nat­ural or manmade disasters are also to be considered. A sustainable national food and nutrition security system should cover all these aspects and address the three issues of availability, access and absorption and primary health care.

ii) Food originates from efficient and environmentally benign pro­duction technologies that conserve and enhance the natural resource base of crops, farm animals, forestry, inland and marine fish­eries.

 

There are different Ddimensions of Hunger:

Chronic or endemic hunger resulting from poverty-induced under-nutrition.

Hidden hunger arising from micro-nutrient malnutrition, caused by the deficiencies of iron, iodine, zinc and vitamins in the diet.

Six Point Action Plan has : Pproposed by tThe National Commission on Farmers is as follows

I. REFORM OF THE DELIVERY SYSTEM:

• The overall approach should be life cycle based and involve appro­priate supplementation pro­grammes. The delivery systems relating to all nutrition support pro­grammes should be restructured on a lifecycle basis, starting with preg­nant women and 0-2 infants and ending with old and infirm persons.

 

• With regard to the PDS, it is high time we went back from the TPDS to a universal PDS with uniform prices. The allocation per house­hold in the PDS should be based on the number of consumption units in the household. The cost implica­tions of universalizing the PDS have been worked out and indicate a grain requirement of 56 million tonnes of grain and support of Rs.35,000 crore to feed 80 per cent of our population. The financial support component is just a little over 1 per cent of our GDP and can be financed by raising our tax to GDP ratio by one percentage point.

 

COMMUNITY FOOD AND WATER SECURITY SYSTEMS AND ENLARGING THE FOOD BASKET:

• Community food security systems are especially relevant in socially cohesive communities charac­terised by limited income inequali­ty and in locations, which find it difficult to access other delivery mechanisms such as PDS. To ensure sustainability, such initia­tives may work closely with elected local bodies.
• Decentralised Community Food Banks.
• Banks can help widen the food security base may be by including ragi and other millets, legumes and tubers in the bank.
    
• Policy must promote the estab­lishment of community grain and water banks, involving Panchayats and other local bodies. This pro­gramme should be based on the principle "store grain and water everywhere".

Community Food Security System:

Conservation, cultivation, con­sumption, commerce of gene bank, seed bank, grain bank, water bank.

 

II. Building a Water Security System:

• Augment supplies through mandatory water harvesting and conservation.
• Give attention to demand man­agement by eliminating all sources of unsustainable use of water and promoting "more crop and income per drop" methodologies of crop cultivation.
• Harness new technologies relat­ing to improving domestic water use efficiency, de-salination of sea water, breeding of drought and salinity tolerant crop varieties, bioremediation etc.
• Each district in the country could develop a sustainable water securi­ty system. Community action should however start at the village level.
• Promote seawater farming through integrated agro-forestry and aquaculture production sys­tems in coastal areas.
• Pay attention to water quality. Equal attention should be paid to the improvement of drinking water quality and the augmentation of water supplies. Bioremediation techniques will have to be used for removing arsenic and heavy metals from tube well water.

 

Safe Drinking Water : Need for Legislation:

• 1996: Parliamentary Committee on Subordinate Legislation says, water should be brought under "food"; the agency responsible for supplying drinking water to the public has to ensure purity and a statute should bind it to do so. Otherwise population will be exposed to serious health hazards, with no one owning responsibility.
  
  An Action Plan for the Water Year 2007-08: (June 1, 2007 to May 31, 2008):
• Aim: Mind set change from quan­tity to the efficiency of use Water Year(2007-08)
• 5000 Farmer-Participatory Action Research programmes in the fields of small farmers, at the rate of one village in every block of the country
• 50 Agricultural Universities, WALMIS and other institutions to take up 100 projects each and also undertake the following tasks
• Empower Gram Sabhas with the necessary knowledge to enable them to discharge the functions of a Pani Panchayat
• Establish a Gyan Chaupal in col­laboration with the CSC (Common Service Centre) programme of the Dept. of Information Technology and launch a Water Literacy Movement

 

I. Train one woman and one male member of each Panchayat as Water Masters.

 

• Rain water harvesting
• Hybrid Seed Production by SHGs
• Commercial Cultivation
• Focal Theme: More yield and income per drop of water
• Hybrid Arhar Villages: Pathway to a Pulses Revolution

 

III. ERADICATION OF HIDDEN HUNGER:

• Hidden hunger caused by micronutrient deficiencies must be addressed based on natural food cum food fortification approaches.
• Local SHGs can be trained to make nutritious biscuits as an income earning activity.
• Nutritional literacy should be promoted at the school level.
• High priority should go to the elimination of iron deficiency anaemia among pregnant women.
• Food and nutrition security needs to be addressed through integrated complementary strate­gies, namely dietary diversification, supplementation, food fortification and community and public health measures.
• Pandemics like HIV/AIDS need special attention:
• There are indica­tions that the incidence of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis is increasing in rural India. A food cum drug based approach is neededneeded to address this issue.:

 

Some examples:

MaladyDefeciency

Vitamins: Vitamin A, vitamin B-Complex vitamin C, Minerals: iron, iodine, zinc, copper.

Remedy

Rape leaves, cauliflower, amaranth, drumstick leaves, spinach, parsley, turnip, greens, carrot, tapioca chips, sweet potato, yam, radish.

 

Fortified Salt: Results of Cognitive tests.

 

Tests

• There is a significant improve­ment in the scores of four memory tests namely Benton's, Cattells, Picture recall and the delayed response memory tests in the experimental group when com­pared to the control.
• There is no significant improve­ment in the digit span and person­al information tests.
• There is a significant improve­ment in the letter cancellation test in the experimental group when compared to the control.

 

Overall, there is improvement in cognitive scores and memory in the experimental group when com­pared to the control.

 

IV. NEW DEAL FOR THE SELF-EMPLOYED:

• Detailed analyses of the causes of food insecurity in rural and urban India have revealed that inade­quate purchasing power due to lack of job/livelihood opportunities is a primary cause of endemic hunger in the country.
• Policies must provide adequate rural infrastructure and promote employment, besides ensuring credit facilities and remunerative prices for produce for our farmers.
   
• The unfinished agenda of land reforms must be completed includ­ing, distribution of ceiling surplus land. There is need for Aquarian reform to ensure the effective and equitable use of ponds, tanks and near shore fisheries.
• Micro-credit Banks should be developed into Sustainable Livelihood Banks (SLB), through backward linkages to technology and credit and forward linkages with management and market.
• We need an integrated Rural Non-Farm Livelihood Initiative pat­terned on the lines of China's Township and Village Enterprise Model.

 

 

IVV. ENHANCING THE PRODUCTIVI­TY AND PROFITABILITY OF SMALL HOLDINGS

Agriculture is the backbone of the livelihood security system for 2/3 of India's population. Therefore, farmers constitute the largest proportion of consumers.

The smaller the farm, the greater is the need for marketable surplus in order to get cash income. Hence, improving small farm pro­ductivity, as a single development strategy, can make the greatest contribution to the elimination of hunger and poverty.

Nearly 80 per cent of the land holdings in India are below 2 ha in size.

Land Ownership Pattern in India:

Percentage distribution of house­holds and area owned across size classes:

 

Number of Hungry Families

Out of the 89.35 million hungry farmer households, about 1.14 mil­lion farmer households do not get enough to eat each day. Of the 1.14 million, 90,000 do not get food in some months of the year and about 50,000 are severely hungry not get­ting enough to eat in any month of the year.

 

Safeguarding the Heartland of the Green Revolution and Arousing the Sleeping Giant:

• The 'fertile crescent' (Punjab, Haryana, Western UP) is in a state of ecological and economic crisis. This area constitutes the main anchor of our PDS and food securi­ty system - Launch a Conservation Farming-cum-Green Agriculture Movement.
•  
• Eastern India, particularly Bihar, West Bengal and Assam, are well endowed with water resources. They have a large untapped yield reservoir. This region can become another fertile crescent, if a synergetic package of technology, ser­vices and market opportunities can be introduced.

 

Integrated Action Plan ; Enhancing Small Farm Production:

• Soil Health Care and enhance­ment
• Water harvesting, aquifer recharge and sustainable and equi­table use
• Credit and insurance
• Technology and Inputs
• Farmer-Centric Marketing Green Revolution Symphony (1968)
• Technology
• Services
• Public Policies