‘Need for a Right to Food’
Every year, 18 million people are added to India’s population, almost equivalent of an Australia indicating there’s a pressing…
This year mark’s sixty years of Oxfam’s work in India. Oxfam’s first work in India was in response to the famine in Bihar in 1951. “Sixty years on, unfortunately, hunger and malnutrition remain major issues in India. About 44 per cent of Indian children under age five are underweight and 48 per cent are stunted. Because of the country’s large population, India is home to 42 per cent of the world’s underweight children and 31 per cent of its stunted children.
A broken food system and environmental crises are now reversing decades of progress against hunger according to new Oxfam analysis. Spiraling food prices and endless cycles of regional food crises will create millions more hungry people unless we transform the way we grow and share food. Oxfam recently launched a new global campaign for a hunger-free world. Oxfam’s GROW campaign is, incidentally, backed by high profile supporters including former President Lula of Brazil, Archbishop Emeritus Tutu and actors like Scarlett Johansson and Rahul Bose.
In an interview with Gajanan Khergamker, Oxfam India Director, Programme and Advocacy Moutushi Sengupta spoke about India being “at crossroads.” While, on one hand, its stellar economic growth achieved in recent years remains the envy of the developed and the developing world. On the other, it continues to be the home to a quarter of the world’s hungry people.
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India ranked 67th in a list 122 developing countries in a recently published global report on Global Hunger Index – much lower than sub-Saharan countries where development remains distant dream. So where is the problem? How does a country which has been experiencing such high economic growth rates continue to have such significantly high levels of poverty and hunger?
Statistics reveal that following the neoliberal economic reforms undertaken since 1991, India’s GDP has doubled. However, during the same period, India has added another 53 million more people to the list who go to bed hungry every night. The reasons behind this anomaly are not far to find. Much of India’s growth has been as a result of the rapid expansion of the service sector. Benefits from the expansion have largely been absorbed by the educated urban elite. It has continued to remain out of reach for the rural masses many of whom have become victims of lopsided economic policies and rampant, unbridled growth of the market economy.
Every year, 18 million people are added to India’s population, almost equivalent of an Australia. The agricultural sector is already under siege and can barely cope. Half of all farmlands are un-irrigated and at the mercy of increasingly erratic annual rains. Over-exploitation of ground water is already a reality in many parts of the country. Over-use of fertilizers on large farms and depletion of natural resources also threaten agrarian productivity. Years of neglect to the development of agriculture, especially that being pursued by the smallholder farmer, have made farming an unviable economic activity.
While the government’s agrarian investments have shrunk since the early 1990s, the numbers of indebted farmers have doubled. In the past five years, per capita food production has also declined. Unreliable and changing rainfall patterns, frequent droughts and floods have added to the woes of the cultivator. There is scientific proof available today on rising temperatures, occurrence of more frequent, unpredictable and intense disasters. In the last century, our planet has warmed by 0.74 degree Celsius.
About 0.4 degree Celsius of this warning has occurred since the 1970s. The impact of these changes on agricultural production has been disastrous and far more so, on the poor than the rich because the poor have little or no resources to deal with climate change impacts.
What does one need to do vis-à-vis small holder farmers who do not wish to pursue farming? Do their lot better their ways after migration to urban settings?
In a recent survey, nearly 40 per cent small holder farmers interviewed said that they did not wish to pursue farming if they could choose other credible livelihood options.
As a result of the declining yields, the story of rural India today is one of mass migration to urban centres in search of options for livelihood, in the hope that this that would ensure minimum conditions for living for self and family. However, even after years of migration, these families continue to live at minimum levels of subsistence.
In most cases, the cycle of growing indebtedness, low wages, poor living conditions and rapidly spiraling food prices push them deeper and deeper in to the murk of poverty, hunger and malnutrition. However, it is worth noting that the impact of these factors has been and continues to be far more severe on women and children. Research findings indicate that the widespread existence of patriarchal customs prompt women to give away their portion of food to the other members of their family, often going to bed hungry for days together.
So, is an alternative future possible?
We certainly believe so at this moment of crisis. There are examples of success around the globe such as in Brazil and Vietnam, where respective national governments, with strong determination and supportive policies, have been able to make significant progress in reducing hunger and malnutrition.
Given the high economic growth rate, India can for the first time take decisive steps, backed by finance, to reduce the wide scale incidence of hunger that continue to badly smudge its story of economic success. It will be unfair to say that efforts have not been made in this direction.
Public schemes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the mid-day meal scheme run under the Integrated Child Development Scheme and the Public Distribution System deserve mention in this respect. Enactment of the Right to Information Act has also been an important step in helping the common man demand accountability from the public delivery system.
However, for a variety of reasons, the gap between expectations and delivery on the ground has continued to exist. There is far more to be done, if we are to establish ourselves as a society with zero tolerance towards hunger. Unless, specific action is taken now, the country will sink in to far deeper levels of crisis.
How does Oxfam plan to tackle the problem of food crisis in India?
Action needs to be taken on a number of fronts and Oxfam is keen to participate in this process with a strong sense of urgency and determination. As many of you will be aware, Oxfam is a global development agency that works in almost 100 countries round the world to fight poverty and injustice. Oxfam has been responding to food crises in India for the last 60 years and we strongly believe that the time to act is now. As of 1 June, Oxfam launched an international campaign to demand food justice for all called GROW, with high levels of anticipation. The message of GROW is simple: ‘Another future is possible.’
Through GROW, Oxfam India plans to campaign for 3 big shifts in how we grow, share and live together. Oxfam India currently implements a wide range of programmes in its seven focus states, namely, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. It works with 200 partners who work at the grass-root level to empower people from marginalised communities to see how government policies and programmes impact these communities and to feed that learning back in to the design of policies and programmes.
For this campaign, Oxfam will use the wealth of solutions that already exist with its partners and elsewhere to make practical, positive changes in how we produce, consume, share and manage food and other resources. We will be working across the spectrum of food production to distribution and access. It will be working with its partners at different levels, both national and sub-national, in urban and rural areas, with the privileged and the under-privileged groups to take the messages through.
By way of campaigns, will Oxfam be involved with forcing a transformation through governmental norms and policies?
The messages are simple: Oxfam will call on governments to lead the transformation to a fairer, more sustainable food system by investing in agriculture, valuing the country’s natural resources, managing the food distribution system better and delivering equality for women who produce much of the country’s food. GROW in India will press for the enactment of an equitable Right to Food Act that provides for a minimum quantum of food to individuals. Oxfam will also ask for higher investments in farming that is pursued by the small holder farmer and for technologies that allow them to do so in a sustainable manner.
The campaign demands that governments recognise and support the role that women play as producers, processors and providers of food and nutrition. Along with its partners, Oxfam India will be reaching out to government to arrive at a just and equitable deal on climate change so that the interests of the vulnerable groups are protected.
Oxfam will also be calling on the private sector to shift to a business model where profit does not come at the expense of poor producers, consumers and the environment. As now, Oxfam will work with communities to protect the land, forest and water rights of vulnerable groups, especially women and tribals. It will continue to work with its partners to strengthen community based mechanisms to reduce the effects of natural disasters on food security.
The campaign rests on the critical assumption that change will not occur with the participation of a small group of stakeholders. It will come through only when the voice for change gathers critical momentum. Oxfam will work to democratise this process of development to ensure that the numbers for change continue to grow. It calls upon citizens across the country to participate in this campaign and lend their voices to demand change so that the alternate future becomes a reality. This is absolutely essential if we are to pull ourselves out of this crisis to move to a situation where there is enough to eat for all, always.
