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By Ashok Gopal
A roadmap prepared by the National Commission on Farmers, chaired by M S Swaminathan, insists that only a Rs 39,500-crore subsidy for a universal public distribution system can solve the food security problem. Is this practicable?
Roughly two decades of economic liberalisation in India have thrown up a paradox that even the most fanatical pro-liberalisation advocates cannot fail to see: while India is certainly shining, in parts, large sections of Bharat are actually worse off today than they were some 20 years ago.
In particular, they are eating less. The number of people in the country who are eating barely enough to stay alive has increased. And the root cause of this increase is not population growth alone.
Consider these facts:
- Per head availability of foodgrain in the country rose from 152 kg during 1950-55 to 177 kg in 1989-92. However, it has since declined and at present it is around 155 kg. In rural areas, the level of food availability has slid to 151 kg per head -- lower than the foodgrain availability in 1950-55.
- In rural India, the average calorie intake per capita per day fell from 2,266 kcal in 1972-73 to 2,149 kcal in 1999-2000. Over three-fourths of the rural population consumes less than the requirement of 2,400 kcal. In eight major states, around a third of the rural population is estimated to be getting less than 1,800 kcal per day. At this level of malnutrition, the body undergoes severe and irreversible damage.
These two points indicate two different problems. Firstly, actual production of foodgrain has not matched the increase in population. In the '90s, when the economy started booming in some sectors, the annual foodgrain growth rate fell to 1.7%, lower than the population growth rate of 1.9%. Per capita availability of cereals and pulses declined from 510 gm per day in 1991 to 463 gm in 2004.
Secondly, the purchasing power of the poor vis--vis the cost of different kinds of food has declined. Only this can explain the lower calorie intake.
Although analysis of the root causes of the two problems covers a vast, complex and contentious area, some broad pointers emerge from several studies.
Since the 1980s, the government has supported food production through subsidies for power, water and fertiliser, and minimum support prices (MSP) offered in advance, rather than increased expenditure on irrigation, power and rural infrastructure.
Subsidy-driven agriculture has led to excessive use of water and fertiliser, which has damaged soil health. In irrigated areas, productivity has plateaued or declined.
As a result, and probably also due to increased use of machines, growth in agricultural employment-generation has fallen. More landless and marginal farmers dependent on agricultural labour are forced to migrate to cities to find work. And 60% of the country's cultivable land remains unirrigated.
Smallholding farmers, who constitute the bulk of the country's agriculturists, have not benefited from subsidies. Two-thirds of Indian agriculture is subsistence-based -- use of electrical power and chemical fertiliser is so minimal here that subsidies make no difference.
Subsidy-driven agricultural policies have helped big farmers, who have, in a parallel development, increased their political clout across parties and at the state and national government levels.
These powerful farmer interests have successfully pushed for continuous increases in both minimum support prices as well as quantum of state procurement by payment of MSP. As a result, buffer stocks maintained by the government are well above the requirement of the public distribution system (PDS).
Mounting costs of holding these buffer stocks have forced the government to periodically increase the issue price of foodgrain sold through the PDS. This has resulted in the absurd situation of godowns overflowing with foodgrain and people going hungry because they cannot afford even PDS prices.
Green Revolution technology mainly benefited largeholding farmers who grew major cereal crops like wheat and rice. It brought little benefit to small farmers growing pulses and coarse grains, which form the bulk of the diet of the poor.
Farmers growing these crops are caught in a low-investment-low-output trap with dangerously high reliance on rainfall and informal credit. Any human or natural crisis, like a serious health problem or too little rainfall, pushes them into a deep well of debt from which they cannot emerge on their own strength.
There has been another major development that has not been adequately recognised. Agriculture in semi-arid and arid areas has become more "feminised", with men migrating to cities for work, leaving women in charge of more areas of agricultural operations. Women constitute at least half the agricultural workforce and, in certain regions, constitute the entire workforce for particular operations like transplantation of paddy.
Women's work has increased even in agriculturally advanced regions. One study showed that in one-hectare farms in the Himalayan region, in one year, a woman worked for 640 hours on weeding; 384 hours on irrigation; 650 hours on transporting and applying manure; 557 hours on sowing; and 984 hours on harvesting and threshing. The total number of hours of work done by a woman (3,485) was more than the total number of hours of work done by a pair of bullocks (1,064) and a man (1,212 hours).
However, women are not recognised as owners or even equal partners in the land. They are almost completely bypassed by official policies. They have a limited role in critical decision-making areas like cropping patterns or choice of technology. When they work as wage labourers, they get paid less than men.
While there is some consensus on declining agricultural productivity, analysis of declining purchasing power is a hotly debated issue as, officially, the poverty rate is declining. But this much is clear from the government figures themselves: since the advent of liberalisation there has been a decline in calorie intake.
It is also clear that various food security nets devised by the Government of India, like the PDS, have generally been failures. For instance, one would assume that the PDS is useful at least in urban areas. However, the 'Food Insecurity Atlas of Urban India', prepared by the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation and the World Food Programme, shows that in 1999-2000, the average cereal consumption of the poorest 10% of the urban population was 9.55 kg/month. Of this, less than 1 kg was accessed through the PDS.
The future appears grimmer. If India is to be able to feed itself adequately, it has to increase annual food production from the current level of around 200 million tonnes to around 400 million tonnes by 2020 AD.
The increased production would have to be on reduced land availability, from the current level of around 170 million hectares to around 100 million hectares, and reduced availability of water, from the current level of around 1,905 cubic metres per capita to less than 1,500 per capita.
Utsa Patnaik, economist at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, estimates that around 40% of India's rural population is already at the nutritional status of sub-Saharan Africa and, in another five years, practically the whole of rural India will descend to that level.
India thus urgently needs a roadmap to eliminate or at least combat hunger.
Such a roadmap has been prepared by the National Commission on Farmers, headed by eminent and high-profile agricultural scientist Dr M S Swaminathan. The roadmap has six action points, discussed in a chapter of the first volume of the fifth and final report of the commission.
What the roadmap actually lays out is nothing less -- or more -- than a complete reversal in the economic thinking currently dominant in India. To summarise, using Dr Swaminathan's words, the roadmap suggests that the government should "always retain a commanding position" in the management of food security.
This Nehruvian-era phraseology would find critics from two extremely divergent camps: the pro-liberalisers, on the one hand, and grassroots organisations that would rather see more devolution than concentration of the government's decision-making powers.
Here are some of the roadmap's "commanding position" ideas:
- The current system of PDS "targeted" at families living below the poverty line should be replaced by a "universal" PDS. According to some basic calculations made by Dr Madhura Swaminathan of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, the annual cost of a universal PDS would be around Rs 35,900 crore.
- The MSP should be expanded to cover more crops, and to make it more remunerative to producers. The procurement price should be fixed according to market rates at the time of harvest, and should take into account increases in the price of diesel, etc.
- Farmers who avail of the MSP should be given discounts for purchase of seeds, fertiliser, etc.
Apart from these "commanding" subsidy-increase suggestions, and "substantial increase" in public investment in agriculture-related infrastructure and health and education, the roadmap suggests the formation of some "commanding" institutions:
- A Livestock Feed and Fodder Corporation.
- A national network of advanced soil-testing laboratories.
- Establishment of 50,000 farm schools.
- 50 self-help group (SHG) capacity-building and mentoring centres in each state.
- A National Food Security and Sovereignty Board.
The roadmap also makes commanding legislation suggestions:
- A National Food Guarantee Act that will ensure that everybody has access to a balanced diet, clean drinking water and primary healthcare.
- Completion of unfinished land reforms, to ensure distribution of all ceiling surplus land.
At one level these are all fine ideas. But will they work in practice?
Can the country swallow a Rs 39,500 crore food subsidy for the PDS alone, let alone push through land reforms that were abandoned over 20 years ago?
On a more practical level, given our experience of an intrinsically corrupt, 'leaking' and inefficient PDS, why should we believe it would be able to deliver?
Dr Swaminathan is unfazed by such observations. "If we want to abolish hunger, there is no way except to promote a universal PDS with a wide range of staple crops," he insists.
Industrialised countries, he points out, give enormous support to farmers and consumers. "They don't call it subsidy. Only we call all life-saving support of a very minimal nature, a subsidy. This mindset should change. The first and foremost responsibility of government is to provide every child, woman and man an opportunity for a healthy and productive life."
The total cost of the roadmap to make India hunger-free would be less than 2% of our GDP, he argues. And the returns are incomparably higher, in terms of more productivity and better human resources.
As regards the inefficient PDS, he says: "We should not work for failure. Panchayati raj institutions, particularly gram sabhas, should provide oversight to an integrated universal PDS and Food Guarantee Act Programme so that corruption can be eliminated."
Likewise on land reforms, he insists on looking at the positives. "If everybody has at least one small plot, there will be opportunities for improving household nutrition security. This will allow the family to keep backyard poultry or animal husbandry or nutrition gardens." A step taken by the Tamil Nadu government in this direction, he says, is "laudable".
Perhaps one does need to think big like Dr Swaminathan when dealing with big problems -- the details can be worked out later. Some changes will take years to materialise. One has to be patient.
Unfortunately, as L C Jain, former Planning Commission member, points out, hunger does not recognise patience. "The empty stomach needs food immediately, and twice a day. It cannot wait."
Criticising the National Commission on Farmers' roadmap for putting too much faith in a system that has failed to deliver, L C Jain offers a "practical" solution that many would find impractical: going back to the Gandhian idea of every village producing food for itself.
Between these widely divergent views lie an array of coping strategies displayed by the poor: migration, eating grass and seeds, committing suicide...
There are also several positive and sustainable strategies displayed by self-help and community food groups. But these successes are paltry compared to the scale of the problem.
The way we are heading suggests a third recipe, one that has remained unstated (though it would not be considered unpalatable in the pro-liberalisation camp): we will become, sooner than we think, dependent on food imports.
Those who can't afford Australian wheat can always eat New Zealand beef!
InfoChange News & Features, January 2007
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