The article was published in The Statesman on 8 December 2004

Orissa:

Kalahandi is an area of "surplus food grain", contributing a fourth of Orissa¡¦s share to procurement agencies. In 1993-94, Kalahandi provided 24,000 tonnes of rice. The next year, it was a little less, contributing 22,000 tonnes. But in 1995-96, procurement shot up to 37,700 tonnes. Production, however, has nothing to do with satiating hunger. But chief minister Navin Patnaik insists that the tribal people of the state were dying not because of starvation, but because of ignorance and backwardness ¡V a result of eating poisonous mango kernel. The paradox of plenty is not confined to Kalahandi. Much of India is faced with the Kalahandi syndrome ¡V food stocks piling up to unmanageable levels at a time when more than 320 million people do not have the means to purchase it.

Rajasthan:

The Sahariya tribe is perhaps the most vulnerable group in Rajasthan. These people live in a situation of chronic hunger and deprivation. Food security is intricately woven with the agri-forest economy. But with rainfall being less than 30 per cent of the annual average, there has been a breakdown of livelihood support base. The Sahariyas have been left to fend for themselves with hardly any state intervention, employment or free food stocks. On 1 October 2002, the PUCL, along with two other local NGOs, reported a hunger-related death toll of about 18, which included 12 children. Except for two, the deaths took place within only one month. According to Unicef, one-third of the children in Rajasthan are born malnourished and by the age of five another one-third become so. The directorate of women and children, government of Rajasthan, however, says only one per cent of the children at anganwadi centres are malnourished. The National Family Health Survey II, on the other hand, says 21 per cent are severely malnourished and 82 per cent of children under five are anemic.

Madhya Pradesh:

Hunger stalks the people of Ganj Basauda tehsil in Vidisha district. Seven children suffering from malnutrition were admitted to the local hospital and several deaths due to malnutrition were reported from the nearby villages of Khajuri, Nahariya and Kanjanain in early November. Block medical officer KK Srivastava says: "Thirty people from these villages were admitted with various diseases. Around ten children with malnutrition were also admitted; seven of them being still in hospital. The worst case is that of one-year-old Tulsabai."

West Bengal:

Starvation and malnutrition killed at least five people in a tribal village in West Bengal. The deaths occurred over a period of three months in Amlasol ¡V a tiny hamlet of 20 odd families along the forested Jharkhand border ¡V where the arid soil does not support agriculture, forcing people to live by selling forest produce. But survival became difficult because of restrictions imposed on the collection of firewood and increased police vigil on Maoist rebels who used the jungles as hideouts. The Midnapore (West) district administration, however, said it was unaware of the deaths. "We have no such news. But if anything of the sort has happened, it¡¦s definitely alarming. We are probing the matter," said Chandan Singh, district magistrate.

Jharkhand:

The media raged over reported hunger deaths in Palamou, Jharkhand last year. Two NGO teams visited Lesligang and met several families. The PUCL team discovered that the worst affected were women and children. In Sitadih, Kawal Patia Bhuiyan died immediately after giving birth. She hadn¡¦t eaten a full meal for days. In Patrahi , Laxmi died after giving birth to a stillborn child in her sixth month of pregnancy. Some very young children also succumbed to hunger. The second team observed drought had severely affected rice-transplanting activities. The district administration also documented that nearly 1,800 families were living in virtual destitution.

Despite such situations of hunger and poverty in the country, millions of tonnes of grain are exported every year. Between June 2002 and June 2003, the worst drought period in over a decade, the NDA government exported a record 12 million tonnes of food grains. Exports of this order, witnessed for the first time in independent India, were made possible only by a significant fall in purchases from the Public Distribution System. This led to the building up of huge stocks although many stomachs remained empty. A widespread food-for-work programme would have restored the people¡¦s purchasing power, but the government chose instead to get rid of these stocks by exporting them. So while millions of our rural poor went hungry, the NDA government chose to feed foreigners and their cattle, even applying a heavy subsidy to beat low world prices.

The Economic Survey 2001-02 argued that excess stocks were a surplus over what people voluntarily wish to consume and that it represented a "problem of plenty". Other data on the falling levels of consumption of cereals argued that not only the well-to-do but all segments of the people were voluntarily moving towards high value foods and away from cereals. The facts, however, contradict such statements. Considering the deceleration of agricultural growth in the 1990s, falling per capita food grains output and rising rural unemployment, to speak of voluntary dietary diversification for the entire rural population is illogical to say the least. And to interpret hunger and starvation as "voluntary choices", and below normal consumption as over-production, is a grotesque travesty of reality. In fact, the five-year NDA rule saw the most violent increases in rural-urban income inequalities since Independence.

Anuradha Mittal, director of Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First), observes that India, where over 380 million people are malnourished, is also the third largest grain producer in the world. In a world that is richer than ever before, and which produces more than enough food to feed the entire global population, an enormous number of people go hungry.

"Hunger, it is argued, is a problem of distribution; a matter of access to the available global food supply," writes Robert W Kates in Ending Hunger: Current Status and Future Prospects (Consequences: Volume 2, Number 2, 1996). According to Kates, this supports the case for a nutritionally adequate, primarily vegetarian diet, for which current production is sufficient to feed 120 per cent of the world¡¦s population. Economists and others rightly point out that the world has much unused capacity for producing food. If poor countries and poor people had greater purchasing power, they argue, more food would be produced and made available.

Hunger isn¡¦t about fate; it is the result of human inaction. Sadly, few of these hungry people are even aware that the right to food is a human right protected by international law. This right is defined as "the right to have regular, permanent and unobstructed access, either directly or by means of financial purchases, to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and sufficient food corresponding to the cultural traditions of the people to which the consumer belongs, and which ensures a physical and mental, individual and collective, fulfilling and dignified life free from anxiety." And governments have a legal obligation to respect, protect and fulfill this right.

As the rich play with their multi-functional air-conditioners and enjoy a more diversified diet, little do they bother about how the same neo-liberal policies that have benefited them have enmeshed millions of others in debt and land loss, reducing their lives to the toughest of struggles. In such a context, the former Union government¡¦s insistence on hunger and starvation being a "voluntary choice" reminds one of Marie Antoinette who advised her starving subjects to eat cake if there was no bread!

(The contributor is an author and freelance writer.)