Short of four decades ago, some scholars believed that India was a ‘hopeless case’. Back in the early 1960s, India was struggling with food shortfalls, unable to feed its 440 million people. Hunger and malnutrition loomed like the specter of death. Today there is surplus food stock available for the world’s largest democracy and its billion plus population. Yet, in spite of supporting the biggest food assistance programme amongst developing nations, 35% of the world’s malnourished children live in India.

Food security comes not from positive reports of bumper crops and a dozen years of normal rainfall but from three key parameters - availability, access and absorption. The Food Insecurity Atlas of Rural India 2001, brought out by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), tells us why this is a story of failed governance - global, national and local.

The issue of food security has been of deep concern even before the Orissa hunger deaths began making annual news since the turn of the decade. People in the poorest districts of the country, located in this northeastern state, eat a paste of poisonous mango kernel because there is nothing else to be had. In the drought-prone regions of Andhra Pradesh or the remote corners of tribal Maharashtra, it is a similar story of terrible distress. These are only the most visible examples. While media attention peaks and pauses, large sections of the most underprivileged Indians continue to die a little every single day.

Researchers in the 1960s used what is called the ‘triage’ method of analysis and classification for developing countries. It traces its origins to medical doctors of the army who separated wounded soldiers into three categories during war:

(a) those who cannot be saved no matter what is done so medical attention need not be wasted on them,

(b) those who can wait, and are not in need of emergency support and

(c) those who need immediate attention and can be saved.

Therefore, ‘can’t be saved’, ‘can wait’ and ‘needs immediate attention’ were the three groups within which existing resources had to be divided and used cautiously, quite akin to the few doctors in the battlefield, as compared to the many soldiers. Says Professor M.S. Swaminathan, world-renowned plant geneticist and architect of India’s Green Revolution, “By this hypothesis, India was hopeless or beyond hope. We have come a long way since then. But, although we have achieved food surplus, we are still lagging behind in access.”

The Food Insecurity Atlas for Rural India, documented in collaboration with the World Food Programme, is a milestone in assessing rural reality. 25-26% of the Indian population is chronically undernourished, by what we call endemic hunger or the lack of adequate sustenance. This is not because there isn’t enough food. India normally produces over 200 million tonnes of grain and 140 million tonnes of fruits and vegetables.

Exhaustive study shows how the availability of food is largely achieved by domestic production - an area which successive governments prioritized at a national level, with producers being given price and non-price incentives. By the year 2000, Indian staple food production had peaked at 209 million tonnes, with overall availability of all major food items.

But availability, as we assume it to be, is itself under threat. Water stress is being experienced in large parts of the country with almost 62% of the net sown area being rain-fed. More than 173 million hectares of land in the country are degraded. This lack of ecological sustainability is showing up as alarming symptoms in Punjab and Haryana - traditionally the breadbaskets of the country.

While the Food Insecurity Atlas ranks Punjab as currently the most food secure state, such continuous exploitation does not bode well for the years ahead. It is, as Dr. Swaminathan warns, “a mindset which leads to the belief ‘economic growth now and care of the environment later’. This will lead us to an era of agricultural disaster.”

The MSSRF study found Bihar and Jharkand to be the overall most food insecure states in spite of having better water sources and being relatively free from droughts. Poverty was endemic with little assurance of dependable livelihood.

Kerala and Tamil Nadu are comforting examples of how state support for literacy, awareness, health and infrastructure (rural electrification is, for example, 100% in these states) with public distribution safety nets, have overcome problems of limited livelihood opportunities. They have achieved the nutritional status of plentiful Punjab with none of its abundant natural resources.

While the government cannot be faulted with its availability record, it fails miserably on the issue of access. Problems of illiteracy, population, employment, caste and gender discrimination remain largely unresolved because of negligent governance.

Sixty six percent of the Indian population depends upon agriculture for its livelihood. But, in spite of spending a large portion of their income on food, the poor still do not get enough either in terms of quantity or quality. Despite cost effective solutions being available, micronutrient deficiency most critically affects women and children. Adult Body Mass Index is below international standards in a majority of the population.

Food security is obliterated instantaneously when natural disasters strike - Orrisa still hasn’t recovered from its devastating cyclone of 1999, nor Gujarat from its merciless earthquake of 2001. Disasters that wreak havoc in days, or even hours, take years to recover from. Gujarat, due to its unstable food production resulting from droughts and disasters, was found to be the most food insecure in terms of availability.

Famine and floods are relatively transitory but when they arrive after a natural disaster, their impact is, quite literally, deadly. The system is already so weak that recovery is extremely slow and painful. Clearly, unless availability of food is followed by access and absorption, the appalling paradox of starvation amidst plenty will keep recurring.

This is related to poverty in all respects. Experts recommend a job-led economic growth, not a job-less growth. Even the Supreme Court of India has said that every individual has a right to food. But, admittedly, annual food subsidies in the region of 13,000 crores, up five times in a single decade, have not managed to eradicate either hunger or the cascading effect of children born with low birth weight.

MSSRF proposes the setting up - at grass-root level - of decentralized Community Food Banks (CFBs) for food storage and distribution. The system comes with the added advantage of low transaction and transportation costs. Community Fodder and Feed Banks are envisaged for those rural societies in which livestock play a critical role.

CFBs can be started from stockpiled government supplies and donor agencies like the World Food Programme. Also equipped as localized disaster management centers with the Gram Sabhas (a body consisting of persons registered in the electoral rolls at the village level) assisting as consultative bodies, the CFBs can compliment and oversee the numerous government schemes already in place.

Particular focus is needed for the ethical issues of special attention for women - the calorie intake of adult women in South Asia is, on the average, 29% less than that of men. With 60% of the Indian women in the childbearing age stunted as a result of inadequate nutrition during their own childhood, hunger is not just endured, it is bequeathed to the unborn as well.

Says Dr. Swaminathan, whose dreams of a hunger-free India by 2007, in time for the 60^th anniversary of the Indian independence, appear dauntingly difficult, “We must utilize the uncommon opportunity of surplus food stocks. They should be utilized for uncommon efforts to eradicate hunger.”

The CFB programme seeks to trigger a self-help revolution in the villages with the help of honesty, neutrality, absence of discrimination, grass-root democracy and strong political commitment. But to India’s hungry millions, these are currently even less available than food.