First proposed in 2009, India's Food Security Bill is being touted by the ruling Congress-led United Progressive Alliance as a way to alleviate hunger among India's 800 million rural and urban poor. Under the new subsidy plan, India will use its burgeoning grain stocks and significantly increase state distribution of key grain staples — wheat, rice and millet. The bill will provide an additional 5 kilograms (11 pounds) of subsidized grain to individuals at sliding cost scale: 3 rupees (about 5 cents) per kilogram for rice, 2 rupees per kilogram for wheat and 1 rupee per kilogram for coarse grains such as millet. A family of five could purchase 25 kilograms of rice for approximately $2.40 a month.
The bill also grants free meals to school children and to pregnant women and lactating mothers for up to six months after giving birth, with prices and policies fixed for the next three years. The plan will be implemented in stages, and will allow individual states an additional six months to allocate funding and grains to implement the bill — measures that mitigated some of the concerns of India's political opposition and helped pass the bill.
Current Measures and Continuing Problems
This will be an expansion of current subsidy schemes, such as those run through the state-operated Food Corporation of India that distributes staples such as rice, wheat and sugar through storefronts. These so-called "fair price shops" can purchase up to 100 kilograms of subsidized staples a month which they then sell at state-mandated prices to holders of subsidy cards, which qualified individuals obtain by registering with local government offices. Those with subsidy cards are allowed to purchase 3 kilograms of sugar, 5 kilograms of rice and 15 kilograms of wheat every month at subsidized prices at these fair price shops. This current system — rife with corruption, waste and complaints of poor food quality — services about 325 million Indians a year.
The new food bill is meant to address the concerns about hunger and nutrition that the current subsidy scheme has failed to address. However, the government has yet to clearly define how an expansion of the current program will address the system's inherent high levels of theft, graft and waste.
The push to approve the bill, and the eventual support from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, reflects the political realities in India ahead of 2014's national elections. Despite the United Progressive Alliance facing accusations of buying votes with food, most members of parliament did not vote against the bill because they wanted to avoid the potential backlash from blocking it. But more important, India still struggles with hunger and poverty. The International Food Policy Research Institute ranks India 67th out of 80 developing countries in terms of success in combating hunger — behind Nepal, Pakistan, Sudan and North Korea. Despite the strong economic gains India has made in the past decade, massive social inequality and persistent poverty are taking their toll as India's high domestic subsidy costs are exacerbated by a weakening rupee and rising energy import costs.
Factors Contributing to Hunger in India
India has long struggled with the daunting task of feeding its growing population. Seasonal monsoon rains can bring prosperity but also flood fields and ruin harvests; weak, absent or delayed monsoons can leave fields parched and barren. Whoever has ruled a unified India has encountered the challenge of managing seasonal variations in crop yields and grain distribution across a large and varied geography.
India's seasonal boom-and-bust rain cycles occur against a backdrop of regional water issues; India is a peninsular country famous for its rivers, but the most consistently watered alluvial plains of the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers are located within Pakistan and Bangladesh. From the Himalayas, the subcontinent transitions from the verdant hills and valleys of the north to the Thar Desert of the northwest, then to the semi-arid grasslands of the Deccan Plateau and the jungles of India's tropics. Rice production occurs primarily in the northern provinces and along the eastern coast, away from the more arid desert regions and the western coast.
Both the British (most famously during the Great Famine of 1876 through 1878) and post-independence governments have had to contend with India's fickle agricultural fortunes and the logistical challenges of feeding the country's people. The Green Revolution of the 1970s saw India make enormous gains in reducing its dependence on imported grain to feed its population, reaching self-sufficiency in grains such as rice and wheat.
Continued agricultural success has not come easily for India. Years of overuse of chemical fertilizers has affected Indian crop yields; while India's rice production exceeds that of its neighbors in total volume, its average per-hectare yields are often less than half of those in Myanmar, Vietnam or Thailand, necessitating more and more agricultural land and water to maintain current levels of output. India produces on average 2.37 metric tons of rice per hectare (2.5 acres), compared to 4.6 metric tons per hectare in Indonesia or 5.22 metric tons in Vietnam, due to a combination of shifting soil chemistry, variations in rainfall and water availability and inefficient farming practices.
The 1980s and 1990s still saw strong year-to-year variations in crop output due to shifting monsoon rain patterns. However, new agricultural policies begun in the early 2000s included the reintroduction of high-yielding seed varieties and a more concerted effort by the central government to increase domestic grain stocks and improve food distribution schemes.
India currently has massive stocks of grains, and the waste of these stocks due to improper storage and transport logistics likely is driving New Delhi's decision to flood domestic markets with cheap grain as much as a need to garner votes and combat hunger. Rice and wheat are rotting in uncovered and insufficient storage silos, and poor transport logistics routinely result in the loss of up to 25 percent of grain between the point of origin and the destination. Current figures regarding India's rice stocks do not give an accurate representation of either the quality and amount fit for human consumption or the amount of stocks that will be delivered to domestic consumer markets following withdrawal from storage.
