Hunger deeper than its index

The debate around the Global Hunger Index (GHI) has been restricted to India’s ranking. Is it 50 or 100, and is it right or not? Is Pakistan ahead of us? All our efforts appear to be aimed at distracting attention from the basic causes of hunger. The International Food Policy Research Institute’s (IFPRI) Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2017, released in October, appraises society’s status by keeping a focus on child nutrition. It’s important because children are usually excluded from growth-centric development claims. The Index needs to be understood from the context of a life cycle, socio-economic systems and policy intent. It addresses an array of issues including gender disparity, child marriage, safe motherhood and reproductive rights, survival of newborns, breastfeeding and food security for children, maternity rights, conservation of natural resources and community’s right over the same, right to identity, freedom from communal, caste-based untouchability and violence, and safeguarding the interests of farmers and labour.

Right to forests, freedom from hunger

India’s scheduled tribe population is 100.4 million. They have their own unique sociocultural identity and lifestyle. Over the decades, they have overcome hunger with their watchful consumption of natural resources. However, some global economic policies have displaced them from their forest-land-water roots, depriving them of their culture-embedded architecture. Unicef’s 2016-17 Report on “Nutrition and Tribal People — A Report on Nutrition Situation of India’s tribal Children” informs that when families and society perpetually suffer from food insecurity, stunted children become a phenomenon. This is a form of malnutrition that cannot be easily reversed. Globally, stunting accounts for a third of the deaths of children below five. This situation arises because of domestic poverty, food insecurity, women not getting adequate nutrition, children not getting appropriate breastfeed and disrupted lifestyle. The 2005-06 National Family Health Survey (NFHS) brought to light that 54 per cent tribal children (6.2 million) suffered from growth-restricting malnutrition due to chronic hunger. Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan and Telangana alone accounted for 4.7 million stunted children. A decade later, the NFHS 2015-16 fails to even identify the number of malnourished tribal children.

Freeing the tribal community from the clutches of hunger is the Constitutional obligation for the civilian government. In this context, the Indian parliament had enacted the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forests Rights) Act in year 2006. The act’s preface states that the tribal community has been subjected to historical injustice, which the government seeks to change by granting each eligible family forest rights for a maximum of 10 acres. It also provides for community rights over minor forest produce, dry wood, medicinal plants, fish and other products of waterbodies, fruits and vegetables. Needless to state, this was the obligatory measure on the part of the government to secure life with dignity to the tribal population and to extricate it from the menace of hunger. However, the report of the ministry of tribal welfare affairs informs that 41.65 lakh individual and community claims had been lodged until February 2017. Of these, 18.47 lakh claims were rejected; the majority of them were from Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka. In most cases, no reasons were assigned for rejection.

Food security without jobs?

Another question that faces the country today is whether food security is possible without securing employment. International Labour Organization’s World Employment and Social Outlook Report (2017) points out that 1.77 crore Indians were unemployed in 2016. The report apprehends that the situation of the labour sector will worsen due to poor opportunities for employment. It shall force lakhs of families to go hungry. Further, migration from villages to cities is on the rise. Urban development policies paint the migrant labour as a filthy criminal. Crisis of agriculture and farm suicides are also marking up the curves of hunger index.

In India, 62.4 lakh newborns died between 2008 and 2015. Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh are the most food-insecure States, accounting for 56 per cent of all neonatal deaths. During this time, 1.113 crore children died before they turned five. Notably, a fourth of the government of India’s special budgetary provision of ₹31,890 crore for health of women and children during 2014-15 and 2016-17 remained unspent.

In India, about 2.8 crore pregnant women are registered every year while only 51.2 per cent of them receive the requisite antenatal check-ups. Strangely, however, the government has added riders such as limitation of maternity entitlement only up to one child and pregnancy only at the age of 19-plus years, under the National Food Security Act.

NFHS (2015-16) informs that 41.6 per cent newborns receive mother’s first breast milk within an hour of their birth and that only 54.9 per cent children remain exclusively breastfed up to six months. Only 42.7 per cent children start receiving the complementary feed during the age of six to eight months. Further, only 8.7 per cent receive adequate complementary diet from the age of six months to two years. The yawning gaps, which the GHI draws from to make its list, should serve as eye-openers.

In the given context, the only option to defeat hunger is to empower local bodies and community-based nutrition programmes. The challenge is that the government does not have faith in women’s groups and society at large. Their urge to promote private sector or advocacy for Direct Benefit Transfers in welfare programming must be dispelled.

Sachin Jainis director of Vikas Samvad and steering committee member of right to food campaign

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