In India, the role played by cooperatives in providing food and related items is important. These cooperatives are playing imperative role in southern and northern parts of India in providing food. The cooperative societies set up shops to sell low priced goods to poor people. For example, in Tamil Nadu, 94 percent of fair price shops are being run by cooperatives.
Another example of cooperatives is the Mother Dairy, in Delhi, which provides milk and vegetables to consumers at controlled rates decided by the Government of Delhi.
Amul, a cooperative of milk and milk products from Gujarat has brought white revolution in the country.
In Maharashtra, the Academy of Development Science (ADS) has created a network of organisation for setting up grain banks in different regions. It also organises training and capacity building programmes on food security. Due to ADS efforts grains banks are setting up in different parts of Maharashtra and now it becomes inspiration for other NGOs to work on same footing and to influence the government policy.
Buffer stock can be defined as the stock of food grains procured by the government through Food Corporation of India with the aim to meet any shortage of demand in future.
Buffer stock (mainly of wheat and rice) is created by the government for following purposes:
1. For distributing grains to the deficit areas
2. For distributing grains amongst poor people at lower prices
3. To meet the problem of food insecurity at the time of natural calamities
The government has ensured the availability to food grains at the country level by carefully designing the food security system. This system has two components: (a) Buffer Stock (b) Public Distribution System.
Many schemes have been launched by the government to provide food security to the people. Two of them are as follows:
1. Food Security Act, 2013: This Act aims to provide food and nutritional security to life at affordable prices and enable people to live a life with dignity. It provides a legal entitlement to subsidised food-grains to 75 % of the country's rural population and 50 % of urban India.
2. Antyodaya Anna Yojana: This scheme was introduced in December 2000. It was meant for the poorest among the BPL families. Under this scheme the poor are given 35 kg of food grains every month at a highly subsidised rate of 3 per kg for rice and 2 per kg for wheat.
Seasonal hunger |
Chronic hunger |
It exists when a person is unable to get food for a certain period of time during the year. |
Permanent inadequacy of quantity and quality of diet results in chronic hunger. |
Irregular nature of work results in irregular income and less capacity to buy food. |
Poor sections with very low income are unable to buy good quality food on a regular basis. |
e.g. seasonal farming, casual labour activities, construction worker, etc. |
e.g. beggars, house help workers, etc. |
At the time of natural disaster or natural calamity, the supply of food gets affected in following ways:
Due to adoption of Green Revolution, India has achieved self-sufficiency in food grains production in last thirty years. But still a section of people in India are without food. It is because:
Yes, we believe that green revolution has made India self-reliant in food grains. Since independence India was striving hard to attain self sufficiency in food grains production. In 1969, India adopted a new strategy in agriculture which resulted in the Green revolution (especially in wheat and rice production). In this strategy farmers were encouraged to adopt HYV seeds, new methods of production, irrigation methods, insecticides and pesticides, etc. Owing to this reason India has become self sufficient in food grains during the last thirty years. Now the varieties of crops are grown across the country.
But this growth was disproportionate. The growth rate of food grain production increased in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab immediately after green revolution but the growth rate did not change in other states. The growth rate of foodgrains is increasing in other states now.
The following states are more food insecure in India:
Some of the problems relating to the functioning of ration shops are as follows:
The following people are more prone to food insecurity:
To ensure food security in any country its three dimensions i.e. availability, accessibility and affordability needs to be ensured.
In India, these three dimensions are ensured due to following reasons.
These programmes contribute in ensuring food security in India.
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