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 (CFB) 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".

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Are you ready for surgery?
Next     : No time for coffee in Copenhagen