Food security bill
Ensuring food security is important for India given that over a third of the population lives in poverty and half of children are malnourished. Several issues impact food security, including economic liberalization in the 1990s, establishment of the WTO and policies like the Agreement on Agriculture, challenges of climate change and crises involving food, fuel and financial prices, targeting in the Public Distribution System, and proposals for a National Food Security Law. Food security exists when all people always have access to enough affordable, safe, culturally acceptable and nutritious food obtained in a sustainable manner. However, India still faces challenges with over 200 million undernourished and high rates of poverty despite economic growth.
Food security bill
- 2. Ensuring food security ought to be an issue of great importance for a country like India where more than one-third of the population is estimated to be absolutely poor and one-half of all children malnourished in one way or another. There have been many emerging issues in the context of food security in India in the last two decades.
- 3. These are: (i) economic liberalization in the 1990s and its impact on agriculture and food security; (ii) establishment of WTO: particularly the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) under it; (iii) challenges of climate change; crisis of the three Fs, viz., food prices, fuel prices, and financial crisis; (iv) the phenomenon of hunger amidst plenty, i.e., accumulation of stocks in the early years of this decade and in 2008-09 along with high levels of poverty; (v)introduction of targeting in the Public Distribution System (PDS) for the first time in the 1990s;
- 4. (vi) Right to Food campaign for improving food security in the country and the Supreme Court Orders on mid-day meal schemes; (vii) proposal for National Food Security Law (Right to Food); and (viii) monitor able targets under the Tenth and Eleventh Five Year Plans similar to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on poverty and women and child nutrition.
- 5. Food security happens when all people at all times have access to enough food that... is affordable, safe and healthy is culturally acceptable meets specific dietary needs is obtained in a dignified manner is produced in ways that are environmentally sound and socially just
- 11. Chronically food insecure : large numbers FAO : 230 M undernourished Dietary Energy supply : 2360 kcal/cap/day Global Hunger Index : India ranks 94 WFP-MSSRF Report : Alarming trends on seven indicators Indias high economic growth rate in the past decade has not been fully reflected in the health status of its people, with 22 per cent of its population undernourished. economic liberalization in the 1990s and its impact on agriculture and food security.