[Assam] From ToI

[Chan Mahanta]

EDITORIAL COMMENT | A Hungry Tide



By the end of 2009, the number of people who suffer hunger worldwide 
could swell to one billion, warns the UN Food and Agriculture 
Organisation in its report, `The State of Food Insecurity in the 
World 2008'. Globally, the number of chronically hungry people 
suffering from prolonged food deficiency is currently 963 million.


  Almost two-thirds of undernourished people live in India, China, the 
Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and 
Ethiopia, according to FAO.



India ranks 66th out of 88 countries on the International Food Policy 
Research Institute (IFPRI)'s Global Hunger Index 2008 and has the 
largest number of undernourished people 200 million in any one 
country.



The IFPRI says the overall hunger situation in India continues to be 
severe, though there are variations across states within India. 
Madhya Pradesh is worst off with hunger levels comparable to 
Ethiopia's. Though Punjab's rank in India is number one, it is 33 
places below other developing countries on the index.

FAO's analysis says food insecurity has increased with rising global 
food prices and the worsening financial situation. Most vulnerable 
are the poor, the landless, women and children, particularly in India 
where widespread poverty and high maternal and infant mortality rates 
make a bad situation worse.

High food prices while making difficult the achievement of Millennium 
Development Goals to halve the number of the hungry by 2015 could 
present opportunities to relaunch small-scale agriculture in 
developing countries, fuelling broader rural development through 
employment and output generation. Sustainable policy initiatives 
ought to be taken that release credit to small farmers and facilitate 
greater market access. Provision of subsidised food and basic health 
care to those living below the poverty line should be a priority.

A peculiar problem is that the number of undernourished people has 
increased even as the world has grown richer and produced more food 
than it has in the last decade. This could be due to several reasons, 
including burgeoning numbers of people, but also because of poor 
distribution networks, unsafe storage of grain, structural 
constraints and governments responding with ad hoc rather than 
sustainable measures to mitigate hunger. At the same time, there is a 
need to address a growing incidence of malnutrition that the upwardly 
mobile in our society face: they eat foods high in sugar and calories 
but poor in nutrients. Malnutrition is not a condition that affects 
only the poor.