People's Democracy

Amartya Sen Stresses On Public Action To End Hunger

HELD on January 10, a public hearing inside Delhi University on the Right to Food gave a call for freedom from hunger as a fundamental right in the backdrop of the slogan of “Give us food, give us water, or quit the government.” The hearing, that turned out to be a miniature Asian Social Forum, was attended by Professor Amartya Sen, among others. Besides Professors K L Krishna, N C Saxena (formerly of Planning Commission), economist Ashok Lahiri, and social activist and economist Jean Dreze, speakers included starving workers who narrated their plight.

Spotlighting hunger In India, economist and Nobel laureate Professor Amartya Sen told a gathering of workers, housewives, teachers, writers and artists that “we are evidently determined to maintain, at heavy cost, India’s unenviable combination of having the worst of undernourishment in the world and the largest of unused food stocks on the globe. Indeed, a regime of high prices in general (despite a gap between procurement prices and consumers retail prices) expands procurement as well as depresses the affordability of food.

“The bonanza for food producers and sellers is matched by the privation of the consumers. Since the biological need for food is not the same thing as the economic entitlement to food (that is, what people can afford to buy given their economic circumstances and the prices), the large stocks procured are hard to get rid of, despite rampant undernourishment across the country. The very price system that generates a massive supply keeps the hands and the mouths of the poorer consumers away from food.

“Indeed, India has not, it should be absolutely clear, done well in tackling the pervasive presence of persistent hunger. Not only are there persistent recurrences of severe hunger and starvation in particular regions but there is also a gigantic prevalence of endemic hunger across much of India,” Professor Sen said.

“Indeed, India does much worse in this respect than even sub-Saharan Africa. Calculations of general undernourishment, what is sometimes called “protein-energy malnutrition,” is nearly twice as high in India as in sub-Saharan Africa,” he said adding that “It is astonishing that despite the intermittent occurrence of famine in Africa, it too manages to ensure a much higher level of regular nourishment than does India. About half of all Indian children are, it appears, chronically undernourished, and more than half of all adult women suffer from anemia.

“In maternal undernourishment as well as the incidence of underweight babies, and also in the frequency of cardiovascular diseases in later life (to which adults are particularly prone if nutritionally deprived in the womb), India’s record is among the very worst in the world,” Professor  Sen said.

Posing the question, “What about food policy, and in particular food prices policy?” Professor Sen said: Why is it the case that the large expenditure on food subsidy in India does not achieve more in reducing undernourishment?  Part of the answer lies in the fact that the subsidy is mainly geared to keep food prices high for the sellers of food --- farmers in general --- rather than to make food prices low for the buyers of food. The high incentive to produce more food while giving little help to the poorer people to buy food has produced the massive stocks of food grains that we find in India today.

“In 1998, stocks of foodgrains in the central government’s reserve were around 18 million tonnes --- close to the official “buffer stock” norms needed to take care of possible fluctuations of the production and supply. Since then, it has climbed and climbed, finally surpassing the 50 million mark, and while it has had some ups and some downs, the total stock is still extraordinarily large, he said.

Quoting from economist Jean Dreze’s graphic description, he said if all the sacks of grain were laid up in a row, this would stretch more than one million kilometres, taking us to the moon and back. (INN)