The Hindu Business Line : Is India inching towards a hunger trap?

IN the dust kicked up by the resignation of Mr Advani, two things of grave concern escaped attention. The first was a statement by Mr Sharad Pawar, Agriculture Minister, that India would import wheat to meet the supply needs of the public distribution system (PDS) and the food-for-work programme.

The second was the eruption of a bullish run in the domestic wheat market right at the end of the crop marketing and procurement period. This situation must be of concern to both consumers and food policy-makers.

An analysis of the international wheat price movements suggest that landed wheat costs Rs 11,000-12,000 per tonne. And wheat in the open market in Delhi is selling at more than Rs 10 a kg. How would a labourer earning Rs 100 a day with a wife and two or three children, living in a Delhi slum, buy enough atta to meet his day-to-day requirements if the wheat prices stay this high?

The timing and suddenness of the price hike are unusual and could affect the food front. The UPA government, while largely scaling down public procurement by the Food Corporation of India (FCI), has continued with the practice of enhancing minimum support price (MSP), while letting traders and speculators target the open market.

The current situation has clearly exposed the fragility of the country's food security. In effect, Mr Pawar's statement leads one to the conclusion that the government would drain the nation's kitty to import wheat from outside when hoarders and speculators corner all the grain available.

Surprisingly, the UPA government did not think of putting a ceiling on how much those in the grain trade can buy directly from the farmers.

This would certainly have put a lid on hoarding. It appears that the current style of liberalisation suits the rich and the middle-class well, and the poor can always be thrown to the wolves. But what is more worrying is the bleak food scenario that is emerging, as a part of the slide in agriculture. Significantly, during the NDA regime, the compound rate of growth for all crops put together came down from 1.51 per cent to 0.94 per cent.

More unsettling is the trend in foodgrains production, which plummeted to 1.19 per cent from 1.58 per cent. Per capita food availability came down from 465.7 grams in 1999 to 409.9 grams in 2003. This is happening while India's population increases annually at 1.8 per cent, proving the Malthusian theory of population increase overtaking food production.

The drop in cereals was from 429.2 grams to 409.9 grams and that of pulses, the most important protein supplement for the vast majority of the poor, dropped from the already low level of 36.5 grams to 28.2 grams!

The National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad, has stipulated that the minimum per capita food intake must be 500 grams a day.

Against the target of 78 million tonnes of wheat, this season the country will, at the most, produce 71 million tonnes. The buffer stock, at slightly more than 14 million tonnes, is a far cry from the days of the NDA regime, when the combined stock of wheat and rice in the FCI godowns was over 65 million tonnes!

The erratic monsoons predict a bad phase for the country's agriculture. It is mid-June, and yet there is no sign of the arrival of the South-West monsoon.

The Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation (C-MMACS), Bangalore, has predicted that there will be 34 per cent less rains this June. If this is borne out, it means the kharif paddy crop is as good as gone. July rains may not help as the planting would be delayed and yields would fall.

The oilseed crop will also be affected, particularly in the dry tracts of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Bihar and Jharkhand.

It is anybody's guess whether India's farm "scientists" have any plans lined up to counter the monsoon failure. The farm sector is still dependent on the monsoon, despite the crores that the country provides for agricultural "research".

The common refrain that the lack of purchasing power is the cause of hunger in India is no longer valid . The fact is, food is no longer cheap. If one carefully analyses the situation it is clear that the declining rate of calorie consumption is linked to the gradual decline in the rate of per capita foodgrains production.

If India's farm scientists had been able to produce food in great quantities it would not be as expensive as it is today. With a population differential of slightly more than 300 million, China harvested more than 550 million tonnes of foodgrains last year. India should be lucky if it can even reach 190 million tonnes .

Clearly the Green Revolution has failed and agricultural scientists seem to be going up a blind alley. For about four decades now, investment for farm infrastructure in the "Green Revolution" belt of Punjab, Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh and, to some extent, Andhra Pradesh has been disproportionate to the attention paid to the requirements in the dry tracts, such as Maharashtra, Karnataka and Gujarat. The former States produce only 25 per cent of the food, yet enjoy 75 per cent of the benefit of the minimum support price (MSP) arrangement.

It is all very well to blame the farmers' plight on the lack of access to farm credit. But the recent findings of the Hyderabad-based Centre for Economic and Social Studies point out that credit is only part of the problem; the larger issue is the cost-intensive and often irrelevant farm technology a farmer is "advised" to adopt, based on "research" results from "experimental farms".

And the government seems unable to pay enough attention to this vital question. Appointing "commissions" and "sub-commissions", establishing "knowledge centres" and suggesting the establishment of a "virtual university" in Kerala are no real solutions to help the Indian farmer.

Needed, additionally, are such bold initiatives as uniform land reforms across the country, a safety net for unorganised agricultural labourers, a sensible seeds Bill (not one that will hand over the seeds sector to the multinationals), and a re-visit to the abolition of quantitative restrictions (QRs), imposed to please the Washington lobby.

Summing up , the farm sector needs a thorough shake-up. Can New Delhi rise to the tough challenge or is it comfortable maintaining the status quo?

(The author is a senior fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.)

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