It’s one thing to draft policies, another to implement them holistically. Policy coherence with a focus on food security is what the Indian chapter of the Club of Rome (CoR), a global think tank established in 1968, intends to pursue at its two-day annual conference that begins on Thursday.

Progressive thinking has been CoR’s forte over the decades. In 1972, the group commissioned ‘The Limits To Growth’ report, based on a mathematical model that explored the interaction between exponential economic and population growth and finite resources. Hitherto a subject largely absent in public debate, the report brought the question of sustainable development to the fore and is still quoted some 40 years later.

“The essence of CoR is to think systems and inter-linkages between different sectors and policy initiatives and to see that they add up to a net-positive outcome. We thought we’d push for policy coherence in food security since our policy-making systems often pull in different directions,” said Ashok Khosla, President, CoR, Indian National Association for CoR.

The conference will bring politicians, bureaucrats, economists and agri-scientists together to discuss food security policies from socio-economic and political viewpoints. Importantly, it also aims to address how policies can help scale up social entrepreneurship, a growing field in India, alongside agricultural innovations.

“There are five million newborns affected by malnutrition each year. Food security, particularly in developing nations like India, is interesting due to the many related aspects, from trade, water and energy policies, land ownership, the environment etc. All of these subjects play a role in the supply-demand scenario,” said Khosla.

“So ultimately this conference will look at healthier, more systemic and long-term policymaking on food security and explore the unintended consequences of policies that seemingly don’t impact food production. MGNREGA, for example, is a landmark policy that’s helped generate rural employment and increased access to food. It’s also led to a shortage of farm labour which has impacted production,” he added.

The National Food Security Act (2013), while “an incredible gesture”, runs the risk of neutralizing itself and the participants at the conference will attempt to thrash out implications at different levels of implementation. “Food security is non-negotiable but how it’s done without undermining itself in a few years is the question,” Khosla told Business Line.

Among those slated to attend the two-day event are Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh, Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth, former Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh, M.S. Swaminathan along with senior faces from the National Dairy Development Board, Indian Council for Agricultural Research, Borlaug Institute for South Asia, World Future Council among others.

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