Challenges in food security
Source: by Abhilaksh Likhi: The Tribune
The recently enacted National Food Security Act, 2013, (NFSA) is being described as a 'game-changer' to strengthen food and nutritional security in the country. It goes without saying that be it basic staples (wheat and rice) or other foods (edible oil, pulses, fruit, vegetables, milk and milk products, egg, meat, fish, etc) India has been quite successful in ensuring their ample availability to its population. But in addition to food availability, there are two more critical factors in ensuring food security for the citizen's — access to food and its absorption for better nourishment.
Despite robust economic growth in recent years, one-third of India's population, i.e., more than 376 million people, in 2010 still lived below the poverty line as per World Bank's definition of $1.25 a day. Besides, the National Family Health Survey of 2005-06 highlighted that amongst children under five years, 20 per cent were acutely and 48 per cent chronically undernourished. These facts underline the relevance of safety-net targeting that makes the poor and vulnerable secure in terms of nutrition, dietary needs and changing food preferences.
In this context, the NFSA marks a significant shift from the current welfare approach to a rights based approach. A legal right has now been conferred on beneficiaries to receive entitled quantities of food grains at subsidised prices. This has been supplemented with conferring a similar right on women, children and other vulnerable groups to receive meals free of charge. Such rights have been backed in the Act by an internal grievance redress mechanism that seeks to foster transparency and accountability in the last-mile governance of public delivery structures, i.e. 4.7 lakh fair price shops. The backbone of the Act, of course, is the large-scale distribution of food grains to 67 per cent of the country's population of 1.2 billion.
The foremost challenge is to ensure the sustained availability of food grains with public authorities. Self-sufficiency has been achieved in grain production at 257 million tonnes despite the growing pressure on land and water. Besides, a gradual shift in the geographic cropped area has been planned over the years from north-western states to the eastern states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal due to overexploitation of ground water. But despite the record food grain production, lack of marketing and procurement infrastructure in these states has been a cause of distress to the small-holding farmers.
A related key issue is the efficiency of the food grain procurement, transportation and distribution chain via the Central pool by the Food Corporation of India (FCI). Though this system is applicable to the entire country, it operates primarily in a few surplus states such as Punjab, Haryana, Western UP and Andhra Pradesh. The Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) observes that it would be cheaper to procure food grains from states such as Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, etc, and deliver to neighbouring deficit or remote states in central, eastern and western India. This could also possibly reduce wastage.
Besides, maintaining and moving the buffer stocks is another mammoth task. Additional procurement, storage and its distribution by the FCI under the NFSA would require rail head connections for all FCI storage points and increase in bulk wagon availability with the Indian Railways. One aspect that needs immediate attention is reform of the FCI apparatus with allowance for public-private partnerships in the movement and storage of grains.
Thus, there is a need during the next three years to enhance strategic investments in agricultural infrastructure, especially in the grain marketing network (as has been done in Chhattisgarh), while we continue to push productivity enhancing technologies in irrigation, power, fertilisers, seeds and post harvest activities.
The second challenge is to eliminate leakage and corruption and ensure stringent monitoring under the NFSA at the last-mile distribution points (fair price shops) in states. The provisions under Chapter V of the NFSA envisage a bouquet of innovative reforms that can be effected by the states. The use of fake ration cards in these shops has already been addressed by states such as Tamil Naidu and Kerala by computerisation of databases and using hologram enabled technologies. These states have also experimented successfully with running of cooperative fair price shops. Madhya Pradesh has used the private sector to computerise the Public Distribution System (PDS) and register beneficiaries with the biometric Aadhaar numbers as well as provide food coupons.
What we need to achieve is a pan India scale with regard to application of communication technologies under the NFSA, especially covering remote and backward regions/districts with vulnerable populations. Rural banking also needs to be strengthened. To do so, the implementation of 2011 recommendations of the Task Force on IT Strategy for PDS (that details the use of technology in supply chain management and electronic payments) has to be fast-tracked in the coming three years.
A related issue is the introduction of cash transfers (as in Brazil, Mexico, Philippines, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh) in lieu of food grain entitlements, linking it with the Aadhaar number. The idea is to avoid the pitfalls of nationwide stocking, storage and distribution of food grains across diverse agro-climatic regions. While individual states would have the freedom to devise their own systems, the CACP's observations in this context need to be viewed seriously.
It suggests that states surplus in cereal production and cities with a population of 1 million or more could straightaway move to cash transfers. It would enable maintaining an optimum buffer stock, ease distribution and storage problems, and bundle cash transfer with health and education initiatives. More importantly, it would prune the estimated US $ 24 billion food subsidy for providing approximately 62 million tonnes of food grains by physical movement through the PDS.
The third and long-term challenge is of qualitative improvement in food absorption, especially for women and children, by creating synergies between public health, sanitation, education and agricultural interventions. First, a comprehensive and functional "national nutrition strategy" has to identify local convergences between the Centrally sponsored Mid-Day Meal Scheme, Total Sanitation Campaign, National Rural Health Mission and the Integrated Child Development Program. Creation of quality rural and urban infrastructure through community participation under the above converged programs has to be achieved through effective public-private partnerships. The outreach programs of civil society and NGOs such as Akshaya Patra (that delivers freshly cooked, nutritious meals to 1.3 million children in government schools through 20 locations across nine states) need to be encouraged, scaled and institutionalised.
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