“Role of
Policies and Institutions in Delivering Food Security in India”
Citation: Ganesh-Kumar, A. and K. Ganguly. 2011. “Role of Policies and Institutions in
Delivering Food Security in India”. Report submitted to the Asian Development
Bank, Manila.
Abstract:
India, being
home to the second largest populace on earth, faces a continuing challenge of
feeding its teeming millions. In the past, the country has faced various tests
from time to time, including one of the worst famines in known history and
repeated bouts of droughts. The country has traversed a long journey from being
a chronically food deficit country living from ship to mouth to becoming a foodgrains exporter with overflowing godowns.
Indian food policy, whose foundations were laid during times of scarcity today faces the daunting task of managing surpluses. Yet the
country is also home to one of the largest concentrations of poor, hungry and
undernourished people in the world. The challenges to India’s food security
today are vastly different in nature from what they were just a few decades
ago. While availability of food is less of a problem today in India, the
ability of its citizens to access the food is the biggest challenge to food
security in the country. The sustained high rate of economic growth in the last
two decades provides an opportunity for the country to take on this challenge
on a scale that was not possible in the past. How effectively the country uses
this opportunity to face up to the new challenges depends upon its policies and
institutions whose task it is to provide food security to the country and its
citizens.
The objective
of this report is to provide an overview of the policies and institutions that
address the issue of food security in India focusing primarily on availability
and accessibility to food. The report discusses the rationale of several
policies and programmes that have been envisaged by the government in terms of
what are the significant achievements and challenges. It also draws upon some
of the international experience in moving from physical transfers to conditional
cash transfers, use of food coupons and vouchers, etc, and their relevance in
the Indian context. The report also seeks to identify the role of partnerships
and synergies between the public sector, private players, civil societies or
farmers’ groups and international agencies (such as the Asian Development
Bank), that can serve the purpose of improving food security in the country.
Finally, the study proposes certain key policy alternatives and suggests
changes in the existing policies that can help address the emerging challenges
to food security more effectively than what has been achieved thus far.