http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/still-too-many-going-hungry/article7322506.ece
Despite the high growth years, malnourishment stalks the countryside. This calls for a small-farmer led focus
At a time when India’s GDP growth is hopefully pitched at 7.5 per cent this fiscal, touted to be higher than China’s, three global reports of significance also grabbed the headlines: The Global Findex Data Base 2014, The Global Food Policy Report of the UN and the State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2014.
Ahead of all these, the IMF and the World Economic Forum reported that 25 per cent of India’s population still remains poor.
The Global Findex Data measured the financial inclusion around the world. The other two reports dealt with the food insecurity and the measures to tackle them.
It must be remembered that the data is mostly up to March 2014. The findings are of great import to this government for designing policies tackling financial inclusion, hunger and malnutrition.
The government would like to measure the poor by the JAM method — Jan Dhan account, Aadhaar, and the mobile. It has been acknowledged universally that there were no deaths due to hunger. But the farmers who produced food committed suicide were burdened by excessive debt.
The undernourished poor, like the Jan Dhan accounts, showed an impressive decline in the reports and these are counted once every three years.
A range of indicators can be used to measure a nation’s food security. These include average dietary energy and protein supply, access in terms of road and rail line density, domestic food price index, prevalence of under-nourishment, stability measured in terms of cereal import dependence ratio, political stability as well as absence of violence and terrorism, undernourished children below five years, anaemia among pregnant women, and vitamin A and iodine deficiency in the population.
Measuring insecurity
Malnutrition is redefined to include obesity and overweight. In India, child stunting (under five years) is 47.5 per cent while undernourishment is 15.2 per cent; whereas overweight population is 11 per cent. The country witnessed an average GDP growth of 8.7 per cent in 2003-08, 6.7 per cent in 2008-09, followed by 8.6 per cent and 9.3 per cent in the next two years.
When the growth of GDP was high and food inflation was also high, there was a decline in the percentage of under-nourished population.