[Reader-list] Reg: Right to Food - Set 1 - Re-entry

[Rakesh Iyer]

Article : 1

Link: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100828/jsp/opinion/story_12863166.jsp

Article:

HOW TO BE A LITTLE LESS UNJUST
The current debate on food security pays little attention to questions of
justice, fairness and dignity, writes *Ananya Mukherjee-Reed

*

There is surely something grossly amiss in this acclaimed theatre of
democracy when a handful of people get to decide how much or how little the
hungry should eat at what price. This begs a rather fundamental question of
justice. Yet, while we hear endlessly about ‘efficiency’ and ‘affordability’
in connection to food security, we hear little about the underlying criteria
of justice. The (implicit) assumption is that the institutionalization of
food security itself is an act of rendering justice. But is it so? According
to whose notion of justice? As Amartya Sen has warned, there can be no
consensus on a single ideal of justice. We should eschew that pursuit and
ask instead how we can make the world “a little less unjust”. But who
determines what is less unjust? Sen argues that the key here is reasoned
public discussion. Current discussions on food and hunger, however, appear
hardly “public” or “reasoned”. What they reflect are the vastly unequal
power relations among the various stakeholders.

Consider, for example, the ‘failed’ food summit in Rome in 2009. It failed
in that the Food and Agriculture Organization failed to raise the $44
billion it needed (no more than $41 per person for the 1.07 billion hungry).
Startling as that is, there is much more at stake in this ‘failure’. In the
lead up to the summit, the FAO undertook consultations with major
stakeholders in order to arrive at a consensus strategy for combating
hunger. A “civil society forum” was organized to “ensure that the
aspirations of the poor, the disadvantaged, the marginalized and the hungry
are successfully voiced”.

Simultaneously, a private-sector forum was held in Milan, where the largest
agribusiness corporations participated. The aim of the latter was to secure
“a vital link with the private sector” which would be “a key to improving
the food security of one billion people”. Farmers, labourers, indigenous
communities — who are the real producers of food — were not recognized as an
equally “vital link” in this key United Nations forum. They were simply
“civil society”. Their agenda of food sovereignty has found no place in the
summit declaration (or in any policy discourse around hunger).

Put simply, “food sovereignty is the right of peoples, communities, and
countries to define their own agricultural, labour, fishing, food and land
policies which are ecologically, socially, economically and culturally
appropriate to their unique circumstances”. It has four non-negotiable
elements: the right to food, the right to produce food; the right to
determine how food is going to be produced, and the right to food-producing
resources. Accordingly, it is against all forms of corporate intervention in
food and, more generally, against mechanisms that allow profiteering from
food and hunger.

In India, the Right to Food Campaign set out with a very similar set of
“essential demands”: “[Right to Food] requires... sufficient availability of
food, which in turn calls for strengthening of sustainable agricultural
production systems, with special focus on the small rain fed farmer. It
requires that land and water must never be forcibly diverted away from food
production for cash crops or industrial use. It also requires effective
systems of minimum support prices, price stabilisation, effective grain
movement and storage, as well as strict regulation of speculation and
trade.”

In Haiti, mobilizations for food sovereignty began even before Haitians had
recovered their loved ones from the rubble of the January earthquake. In
Bangladesh, the Nayakrishi Andolon has long argued that food security cannot
be guaranteed without guaranteeing the security of the food producing
households. From Bangladesh to Bolivia to Mali, social struggles are calling
for food sovereignty as the only substantive solution to endemic hunger. At
the heart of this struggle is the wish to redress one injustice: that the
majority of the world’s hungry are those who produce food — but are
powerless to determine how it is produced or consumed.

Seen in this light, food entitlements, however ‘generous’ they are, can make
only highly tenuous, emaciated claims to justice, if at all. As conceived in
the current framework of the Food Security Act, they can, at best, only
impact distribution while keeping the undemocratic productive structures —
which generate hunger in the first place — untouched. Could it then stand to
reason that we try to limit — rather than maximize — even that impact on
distribution? That we render the entitlements of the hungry entirely
negotiable and dependent on ‘hard’ evidence of their depravation? Surely,
such an approach risks even greater injustice? Also, as a recent news story
illustrated, it may have the potential for further assaulting the human
dignity of our fellow citizens.

In Seoni, Madhya Pradesh, a hundred families woke up to see ‘I am poor’
marked on their doors. Apparently, *panchayat* officials were trying to
perfect their BPL count. “It is very painful to be branded like this,” said
Bheekham, whose door was so marked. The affected families have filed a
complaint with the National Human Rights Commission.

Bheekham’s pain reveals something endemic to deeply unequal societies
claiming to be ‘democracies’ — that those who make policies to ‘benefit’ the
poor or the hungry have little patience for what their beneficiaries value
or demand, or what constitutes justice from their perspective. This is why
the demand for democratizing food production is off the table; and the goal
of universal right to food — which could guarantee not only food but also
some dignity — can so easily be substituted with a watered-down,
undemocratically determined notion of food security. For a society that
makes tall claims for its representativeness, this constitutes a double
failure of justice and democracy.

-- 
Rakesh Krishnamoorthy Iyer
MM06B019
Final Year, Dual Degree Student
Dept. of Metallurgical & Materials Engineering
IIT Madras, Chennai - 600036
Phone no: +91-9444073884
E-mail ID: rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com