[Reader-list] RTF (Right to Food) Articles - 14

[Rakesh Iyer]

Source: The Hindu

Date: Sunday, October 07, 2001

Link: http://www.hinduonnet.com/2001/10/07/stories/13070611.htm

Article:

Eliminating hunger: a challenge

It is now clear that community managed food and nutrition security systems
are the most effective in achieving freedom from hunger and in ensuring
sustainability through low transaction costs and replicability. Noted
agricultural scientist M.S. SWAMINATHAN proposes a platform for such a
system, which was highlighted in his inaugural lecture at the conference on
'The Right to Food: A Challenge for Peace and Development in the 21st
Century' in Rome last month.

FOOD and drinking water constitute the most basic needs of a human being.
Yet these needs are not met today all over the world. At the beginning of
the first millennium, the Roman philosopher Seneca said "a hungry person
listens neither to religion nor reason, nor is bent by prayers", thereby
stressing that where hunger rules, peace cannot prevail. In spite of this
understanding, hunger and malnutrition were widely prevalent in the first
millennium.

The situation continued in the second millennium although sometimes lack of
food had an unexpected welcome outcome. One of the wars in Europe (1778-79)
was termed Kartoffel Kreig, since the fighting ended when the Prussian and
Austrian armies had consumed all the available potatoes in Bohemia. Towards
the end of the second millennium, technological developments helped to
improve food production substantially (popularly referred to as the Green
Revolution), making it possible to raise the rate of food production above
the population growth rate in most parts of the world. This helped to keep
at bay the fears expressed by Thomas Malthus in 1798 concerning a potential
mismatch between human numbers and the capacity to produce food. However,
widespread poverty-induced protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) continued to
persist. Mahatma Gandhi said in 1946, "to those who are hungry, God is
bread".

The third millennium began with the paradox of the co-existence of surplus
grain and extensive endemic hunger, particularly in South Asia. Emerging
technologies - in the areas of precision farming, ecotechnology,
information, space and biotechnology and crop-livestock-fish integrated
production systems - hold promise to foster an evergreen revolution in
farming, rooted in the principles of ecology, economics, gender and social
equity, energy conservation and employment generation. Hence, given
appropriate blends of technologies, services and public policies, the
physical availability of food can be ensured. The challenge lies in
providing economic access to food through jobs or sustainable livelihood
opportunities.

In the midst of the prevailing gloom, there are many bright spots in
relation to the elimination of hunger. It is now clear that community
managed and controlled food and nutrition security systems are the most
effective both in terms of achieving the desired goal of freedom from
endemic, hidden and transient hunger and in ensuring sustainability through
low transaction costs and replicability. Hence, I wish to propose a platform
for such a system, based on three interlinked action plans.

Adopt a whole life-cycle approach to nutrition security:

*Pregnant women*: Overcoming maternal and foetal under-and mal- nutrition is
an urgent task, since nearly 30 per cent of the children born in India are
characterised by low birth weight (LBW), with the consequent risk of
impaired brain development. Half of the world's malnourished children are in
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. LBW is a proxy indicator of the low status
of women in society, particularly of their health and nutrition status
during their entire life cycle.

*Nursing mothers*: Appropriate schemes will be necessary to provide support
to enable mothers to breast-feed their babies for at least six months, as
recommended by World Health Organisation (WHO). Policies at work places,
including the provision of appropriate support services, such as creches,
should be conducive to achieving this goal.

*Infants (0-2 years)*: Special efforts will have to be made to reach this
age group through their mothers, since they are the most unreached at
present. Eight per cent of brain development is complete before the age of
two. The first four months in a child's life are particularly critical,
since the child is totally dependent on its mother for food and survival.

*Preschool children (2-6 years)*: A well-designed integrated child
development service will help cater to the nutritional and health care needs
of this age group.

*Youth (6-20 years)*: A nutrition-based noon meal programme in all schools
(public and private and rural and urban) will help to improve the
nutritional status of this group. However, a significant percentage of
children belonging to this age group does not go to school due to economic
reasons. Such school "push- outs" or child labourers need special attention.


*Adults (20-60 years)*: The nutrition safety net to cater to this category
should consist of both an entitlement programme like food stamps and the
public distribution system (PDS), as well as a food for eco-development
programme (a redesigned "food for work" programme). The food for
eco-development programme can promote the use of foodgrains as wages for the
purpose of establishing water harvesting structures (water banks) and for
the rehabilitation of degraded lands and ecosystems. Thus, many downstream
benefits and livelihood opportunities will be created. In designing a
nutrition compact for this age group, persons working in the organised and
unorganised sectors will have to be dealt with separately. Also, the
intervention programmes will have to be different for men and women taking
into account the multiple burden on a woman's daily life.

 *Old and infirm persons*: This group will have to be provided with
appropriate nutritional support, as part of the ethical obligations of
society towards the physically and mentally handicapped.

The above whole life-cycle approach to nutrition security will help to
ensure that the nutritional needs of everyone in the community and of every
stage in an individual's life are satisfied (Figure 1). Such an approach is
essential to confer on every child an opportunity for a productive and
healthy life.

Adopt a holistic action plan to achieve sustainable nutrition security at
the level of each individual:

*The major components of such an integrated action plan are the following:*

*Identification*: Identify those who are nutritionally insecure through the
gram sabha. Trained community volunteers, designated "hunger fighters", will
be useful for this purpose.

*Education and information empowerment*: Empower those who are not aware of
their entitlements about the nutritional safety nets available to them and
also undertake nutrition education. An entitlements database can be
developed for each area and household entitlement cards can be issued,
indicating how to access nutritional, health care and educational
programmes.

The educational programmes should also lay stress on culinary habits in
relation to the conservation of essential nutrients in cooked food.

Overcome protein and calorie malnutrition: The various steps indicated under
the whole life-cycle approach will have to be adopted. The problems of child
labour and of persons working in the unorganised sector will need specific
attention.

*Eliminate hidden hunger*: This is caused by the deficiency of
micronutrients in the diet. Introduce an integrated approach including the
consumption of vegetables and fruits, millets, grain legumes and leafy
vegetables and the provision of fortified foods like iron and iodine
fortified salt and oral dose of Vitamin A. The basic approach should be a
food-based one, with emphasis on home and community nutrition gardens,
wherever this is socially and economically feasible.

Drinking water, hygiene and primary health care: Attend to the provision of
safe drinking water and to the improvement of environmental hygiene. Also,
improve the primary health care system.

*Sustainable livelihoods*: Improve economic access to food through
market-linked micro-enterprises supported by micro-credit. Also, create an
economic stake in the conservation of natural and common property resources.
Ensure that agreements under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) provide a
level playing field for products coming from decentralised small scale
production (production by masses or farmers' farming) as compared to those
emerging from mass production technologies or factory farming. Promote
job-led economic growth and not jobless growth.

Pay special attention to pregnant and nursing mothers and pre- school
children: Measure progress through monitoring maternal mortality rate,
infant mortality rate, incidence of LBW children and male-female sex ratio.
Iron-folate supplements during prenatal care should be accompanied by steps
to overcome protein- energy deprivation. Mina Swaminathan has proposed a
maternity and child care code which, if adopted, will help to bring down
speedily MMR, IMR, LBW and stunting. Child sex ratio is a good index of the
mind-set of a society in relation to the girl child.

*Community food bank as an instrument of Sustainable Food and Nutrition
Security*

Community food banks (FCB) can be started at the village level, with initial
food supplies coming as a grant from Governments and donor agencies like the
World Food Programme. Later, such CFBs can be sustained through local
purchases and from continued Government and international support for food
for eco-development and Food for nutrition programmes.

Local purchases of nutritious grain like ragi, various millets, pulses,
oilseeds and tubers will help to enlarge the food basket and will prevent
such locally adapted grains from becoming "lost crops". The CFB can be the
entry point to not only bridging the nutritional divide, but also for
fostering social and gender equity, ecology and employment. They can also be
equipped to cater to emergencies like cyclones, floods, drought and
earthquakes. They will help reduce transport and transaction costs and
provide a transparent mechanism for fulfilling entitlements.

The CFBs can be organised through self-help groups trained and entrusted
with the following four major streams of responsibilities.

*Entitlements*: The benefits of all government and bilateral and
multilateral projects intended for overcoming under-and mal- nutrition such
as Antyodaya Anna Yojana and Annapoorna can be delivered in a coordinated
and interactive manner.

*Ecology*: Food for eco-development with particular reference to the
establishment of water banks, land care, control of desertification and
afforestation. Thus, grain can be used to strengthen local level water
security. The recently announced Sampoorn Gramin Rozgar Yojana provides a
great opportunity for using food for eco-development.

*Ethics*: This group of activities will relate to nutritional support to old
and infirm persons, pregnant and nursing mothers and infants and pre-school
children.

*Emergencies*: This activities will relate to the immediate relief
operations following major natural catastrophies like drought, floods, a
cyclone and an earthquake, as well as to meet the challenge of seasonal
slides in livelihood opportunities because of crop failure.
Each of the above four streams of activities can be managed by four separate
self-help groups of local women and men. This will help to generate a
self-help revolution in combating hunger. The overall guidance and oversight
may be provided by a multi- stakeholder Community Food Bank Council
functioning under the oversight of the gram sabha. A diagrammatic
representation of the Community Food Security System is given in Figure 2.

The Prime Minister announced on August 15, the initiation of a Sampoorn
Gramin Rozgar Yojana with an initial allocation of five million tonnes of
grains a year. The twin goals of this programme are household food security
and employment generation. The grain will be provided to State Governments
free of charge. The CFB idea has also been endorsed by a special committee
of Union Ministers and Chief Ministers. Therefore, there should be no
impediment in launching a total attack on endemic hunger.

*Resource Centres for CFBs*

For the CFB movement to succeed, there is need to train managers of such
food banks and to build the capacity of the community oversight council to
plan and monitor the different programmes. Training modules will have to be
prepared for this purpose. Accounting and monitoring software will have to
be developed and the members of the self-help groups (SHG) will have to be
trained in the use of the software and in managing the computer-aided
knowledge centres, linked to CFBs. Four different training modules, each
relating to entitlement, eco-development, ethics and emergencies will have
to be developed, so that each SHG is headed by a professionally trained
woman or man. A network of institutions which will provide the necessary
managerial, technical and training support to managers of self-help groups
and CFBs will have to be organised. All this will call for both faith in
grassroot democracy and strong political commitment to ending the
nutritional divide as soon as possible.

In developing the programmes and priorities, the community food bank
councils should keep in view:

The rich diversity of experience gained through a variety of efforts over
decades.

The varied cultural, social, economic and agro-ecological contexts, needs
and expectations.

Documented examples of outstanding achievements and the lessons thus learnt.


The paucity of inter-disciplinary institutions, courses and personnel at the
higher level.

Slow growth of grassroot level democratic institutions

The limitations of funds and resources

The need for priority attention to women and children; for example in South
Asia, the calorie intake of adult women is on an average 29 per cent lower
than that of men.

Priority attention to the "hunger hotspots" in each State.

The launching of a national movement for community managed nutrition
security systems is an idea whose time has come since purely government
administered programmes have failed to eliminate hunger and the birth of
children with low weight.

Grassroot level community food banks, if supported by Central and State
Governments will be able to help in achieving the triple goals of nutrition
for everyone, nutritional adequacy at all stages in the life cycle and
insulating the economically and socially deprived sections of the community
from seasonal under- and mal-nutrition.

I started with a quotation from the Roman philosopher, Seneca. I would like
to conclude with a poem by W. H. Auden.

"Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police.
We must love one another or die ...
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages;
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame".

 Let us all strive to become affirming flames in the midst of the sea of
apathy, hypocrisy and despair we see around us.

* * *

The writer is chairman, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai.