dna edit: Food for thought

For nearly three years now, the UPA government has had a stock answer to those questioning the uncomfortably high rate of food inflation. Its ministers and economists have responded with a standard “it will soften in a month” line. Last month, it was food minister KV Thomas who mouthed this line when wholesale onion prices witnessed a 245 per cent jump in August from the previous year. However, the latest official data shows that wholesale food inflation rose year-on-year to 18.4 per cent in September from 6.04 per cent in April.

Vegetable prices were 89 per cent — and onion prices 323 per cent — higher from last year. On Monday, it was Planning Commission vice-chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia’s turn to advocate patience until next “month or so”. Time is running out for the likes of Ahluwalia and Co. Elections have drawn close and public impatience is wearing thin.

A slew of short-term measures like onion imports and raids on hoarders have been mooted but the fundamental issues causing supply-side strains have been ignored. The paucity of cold chain and warehousing facilities ensures that India loses around Rs2 lakh crore worth of fruits and vegetables post-harvest. Less than 15 per cent of the total warehousing capacity of 112.37 million tonnes in the country is available for vegetables. Unlike foodgrain production that has shown a steady increase in recent years, the total cropped area and production of onions fell marginally in 2012-13. The minimum support prices available for foodgrains have predisposed farmers towards cereals against vegetables. While a bumper harvest in rice and wheat is expected this year owing to the bountiful monsoons, open market prices will not fall due to the large offtake for the food security programme.

But it remains to be seen whether the present food security scheme can act as a hedge against food inflation. Its stated aim of offering rice at Rs3/kg and wheat at Rs2/kg to 50 per cent of the population in urban areas and 75 per cent in rural areas is laudable. More so, considering that India is home to nearly a quarter of the world’s hungry. While successive Congress and BJP governments are quick to claim that the neo-liberal shift from the early Nineties has benefited the economy and pulled a large number of people out of poverty, nutritional figures do not reflect the benefits of increased incomes.

The 66th round of the National Sample Survey on monthly per-capita expenditure showed that nutritional intake dipped from 2,153 Kcal in 1993-94 to 2,020 kilocalories (Kcal) in 2009-10 in rural areas and from 2,071 to 1,946 Kcal in urban areas. Two possible explanations for this drop are that inflation has outstripped income growth forcing people to eat less or that food has become cheaper allowing people to spend more on other goods. However, the latter explanation is not borne out by facts as the PDS system is functioning effectively in few states. Some ironies are hard to miss and harder to ignore. Can the aspirations of the Indian people be sated by a food security scheme centred exclusively around foodgrains when other nutritious foods — vegetables, fruits, milk, chicken, eggs, fish and cooking oil —  have become a luxury few can afford daily or even weekly?