Hunger in India is still a severe problem

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Vinod Anand

04 January, 2011

The IFPRI says the overall hunger situation in India continues to be severe, though there are variations across states within India. Madhya Pradesh is worst off with hunger levels comparable to Ethiopia's.

INDIA HAS the largest number of undernourished people. The number of people, who suffer hunger worldwide has reached the one billion mark, and in time to come, it will become much more. Almost two-thirds of undernourished people live in India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia, according to FAO Report.

Indian ranks 66th out of 88 countries on the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)’s Global Hunger Index 2008, and has the largest number of undernourished people- 200 million- in any one country. The IFPRI says the overall hunger situation in India continues to be severe, though there are variations across states within India. Madhya Pradesh is worst off with hunger levels comparable to Ethiopia’s. Though Punjab’s rank in India is number one, it is 33 places below other developing countries on the index.

FAO’s analysis says that food insecurity has increased with rising global food prices and the worsening financial situation. Most vulnerable are the poor, the landless, women and children, particularly in India where widespread poverty and high maternal and infant mortality rates makes a bad situation worse. High food prices- while making difficult the achievement of Millennium Development Goals to halve the number of the hungry by 2015- could present opportunities to relaunch small-scale agriculture in developing countries, fuelling broader rural development through employment and output generation.

Sustainable policy initiatives ought to be taken that release credit to small farmers and facilitate greater market access. Provision of subsidised food and basic health care to those living below the poverty line should be a priority. A peculiar problem is that the number of undernourished people has increased even as the world has grown richer and produced more food than it has in the last decade.

This could be due to several reasons, including burgeoning numbers of people, but also because of poor distribution networks, unsafe storage of grain, structural constraints and governments responding with ad hoc rather than sustainable measures to mitigate hunger. At the same time, there is a need to address a growing incidence of malnutrition that the upwardly mobile in our society face: they eat foods high in sugar and calories but poor in nutrients. Malnutrition is not a condition that affects only the poor.