India has a large stockpile of grain due to agricultural subsidies and innovation, yet about 250 million Indians do not get enough food. While the government buys grain from farmers and stores it to sell at subsidized prices, widespread corruption and inefficiency plague the public distribution system meant to provide food to the poor. Food often rots in storage or gets diverted to other uses due to poor infrastructure and mismanagement. As a result, India has high levels of malnutrition despite its abundant food supply. Reformers argue for modernizing the storage system, making it easier to obtain ration cards, and replacing the current system with cash transfers or food stamps.

3.  India’s food policy has two
central goals: to provide
farmers higher and more
consistent prices for their crops
than they would get from the
open market, and to sell food
grains to the poor at lower
prices than they would pay at
private stores.
 The federal government buys
grain and stores it. Each state
can take a certain amount of
grain from these stocks based
on how many of its residents
are poor. The states deliver the
grain to subsidized shops and
decide which families get the
ration cards that allow them to
buy cheap wheat and rice
there.

4. Food
Abundance

5.  . Spurred by agricultural innovation and generous farm subsidies, India now grows
so much food that it has a bigger grain stockpile than any country except China, and
exports some of it to countries like Saudi Arabia and Australia.

7.  Hunger a weakened
condition brought about by
prolonged lack of food
 Just 180 miles to the south, in
a slum on the outskirts of New
Delhi, Leela Devi struggled to
feed her family of four on
meager portions of flatbread
and potatoes, which she said
was all she could afford on
her disability pension and the
irregular wages of her day-
laborer husband. Her family is
among the estimated 250
million Indians who do not get
enough to eat

8. Problems

9.  India’s one-fifth of its people are
malnourished — double the rate of other
developing countries like Vietnam and
China — because of pervasive corruption,
mismanagement and waste in the
programs that are supposed to distribute
food to the poor.
 Devi, who lives in the Jagdamba Camp
slum in south Delhi, said she was denied a
ration card four years ago. She said her
family’s steadiest income is a disability
pension of 1,000 rupees a month she gets
because of burns suffered in an accident a
few years ago. While her husband
sometimes earns up to 3,000 rupees a
month as a laborer, she says she should
be entitled to subsidized grain since they
must often get by on 2,000 rupees or less.
 “Sometimes, we just have to sit and wait,”
she said. “My mother-in-law gets
subsidized food and she gives me some
when she can.”

10. REASONS

11.  RANWAN, India | In this north Indian village, workers recently dismantled stacks of burned and
mildewed rice while flies swarmed nearby over spoiled wheat. Locals said that the rice crop had
been sitting along the side of a highway for several years and was now being sent to a distillery
to be turned into liquor.
 Such is the paradox of plenty in India’s food system.

12.  The major construction materials for storage structures in rural areas are mud,
bamboo, stones, and plant materials. They are neither rodent-proof, nor secure from
fungal and insect attack. On average, out of a total 6% loss of food grain in such
storage structures, about half is due to rodents, and half to insects and fungi.

13.  “The reason we are facing this problem
is our refusal to distribute the grain that
we buy from farmers to the people who
need it,” said Biraj Patniak, a lawyer
who advises India’s Supreme Court on
food issues. “The only place that this
grain deserves to be is in the stomachs
of the people who are hungry.”
 The biggest gap is the inefficient,
corrupt system used to get the food to
those who need it.
 Poor Indians who have ration cards
often complain about both the quality
and quantity of grain available at
government stores, called fair price
shops.
 Other families do not even have ration
cards because of the procedures —
and often, bribes — required to get
them.
Some are denied because they cannot
document their residence or income.
And critics say more people would
qualify if the income cutoff were raised;
in New Delhi, it is 2,000 rupees ($36) a
month, regardless of family size, a sum
that many poor families spend on rent
alone.
 Critics say that officials all along the
chain, from warehouse managers to
shopkeepers, steal food and sell it to
traders, pocketing tidy, illicit profits.

15.  Improving storage.
 Some of the major considerations in building a storage structure to minimize
losses are:
 the structure should be elevated and away from moist places in the house;
 as far as possible, the structure should be airtight, even at loading and
unloading ports;
 rodent-proof materials should be used for construction of rural storages;
 the area surrounding the structure should be clean to minimize insect breeding;
and
 the structure should be plastered with an impervious clay layer to avoid termite
attack, or attack by other insects.

16.  . Some states, like Tamil Nadu
and Chhattisgarh, have made
big improvements by using
technology to track food and
have made it easier for almost
all households to get ration
cards. Other states, like Bihar,
have experimented with food
stamps.
 Reformers argue that India
should move toward giving the
poor cash or food stamps as
the United States, Mexico and
other countries have done.
That would reduce corruption
and mismanagement because
the government would buy and
store only enough grain to
insure against bad harvests.
And the poor would get more
choices, said Ashok Gulati,
chairman of the government’s
Commission for Agricultural
Costs and Prices.

17. An Healthy
Nation
Is A
Happy Nation

18. Thank you
Deeksha Singh Sengar
B.Des FD(13/02/13)