‘Our food basket should include nutria-millets'

What is the biggest challenge for India's food security?

Dr M.S. Swaminathan: Conservation of natural resources, mainly land and water, is the biggest challenge. Our land is being squeezed due to massive industrialisation and urbanisation. Water sources are drying by the day. Global warming and climate change have become big hurdles to protecting rural livelihoods through farming.

You seem to advocate traditional technology?

Tribal knowledge is ancient knowledge that has come down to us through the experiences of people. Tribals lived with, not against, nature. They have over the millennia coped with droughts, floods and other problems. We can learn a lot from them on how to manage risk, because their agricultural practices are not profit-maximising, but risk-minimising.

I am for a combination of traditional and modern technologies, what is called eco-technology. We must combine the good ecological principles of the past with the latest technology. For instance, the conservation of biodiversity by Koraput's tribals is commendable; we need to build on it.

How can we ensure food for all?

I have always pleaded for a universal PDS based on life-cycle approach: From conception to cremation. And we should enlarge the food basket to include what we call nutria-millets such as jowar , ragi , bajra , madua — which have high nutritive value — and not just depend on wheat and rice. In China, out of over 500 million tonnes of foodgrain produced, 140 million tonnes are nutria-cereals and millets. Here it is just 50-60 million tonnes.

I have been insisting that the entitlement card or ration card should be in the name of women. Because, finally, a woman is practically the one who is in-charge of food security in the family. I don't think we should go in for cash transfers. Give grain instead. This has the double advantage of not just raising nutritional standards but also increasing the income of farmers, from whom you procure the grain.

Look at the human resources development report of the Planning Commission. It says that over the last 25 years, the body-mass index and height-by-weight index have remained unchanged. This means people are eating something but not enough to have a healthy and active life. This must change.

(Interviewed by Sarada Lahangir)

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