A NATIONAL daily on Thursday reported that more than a quarter of the 3.86 crore population in 18 northern and southern districts suffer from chronic food insecurity in a degraded life beset by poverty, poor sanitation and low level of nutrition. Many of them have no land or not enough land to produce food and also not enough purchasing power to buy food to live a modest life.
What is alarming as the report has pointed out is that the affected people consume inadequate quantities of food for more than two months of the year and consume poor diet to have moderate to severely malnourished children. The disclosure came at a time when the country claims to have achieved food self-sufficiency and exporting rice in limited quantity from surplus stock. There is no secret that we have achieved significant poverty reduction and breakthrough in food production but that does not mean that everyone is getting enough physical and financial access to sufficient food to meet their dietary needs for a productive and healthy life. So, food insecurity in both transitory and chronic forms is still making lives of many unbearable and insecure.
The problem is only getting worse because of constantly losing arable land by the poor in our society where the rich control everything – land and money. It is essentially a distributive problem where the spirit of egalitarianism is missing and a person’s basic right to food is ignored to force the poor to become poorer while the rich are amassing huge wealth. This is what is called the free market economy. As it appears the food insecurity gets more pronounced to some people living in extreme poverty in those northern and southern districts during the monga season; which means a chronic food shortage during pre-harvest Aman season in October-November period. The impact of monga has slowed down over the recent years but the extreme poor are still victims of less food and low income due to seasonal variation in agricultural employment and limited employment in non-farm sector.
It is true that the government has some food security schemes like VGF, OMS etc at work to protect the poor from chronic food insecurity. But these are not enough. We believe that long term preemptive measures like rural infrastructure work must be in hands to increase employment diversity locally. The government can set up economic zones in those regions while the private sector can set up more industries to give people job at their door-steps. It needs quick development of education and health to turn these people into effective workforce.
