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India has been a land of great agricultural abundance
throughout her long history. It was during the period of
British administration that agriculture began to languish in
large parts of the country, and per capita availability of
food declined to the level of around 200 kg per capita per
year, which suffices only to maintain bare physical existence.
After getting rid of the British almost five decades ago, much
public effort has gone into agriculture; but per capita
availability of food has remained almost unchanged.
Consequently, a large proportion of Indian people have
continued to remain hungry and malnourished.
Agriculture is the key to the economic growth of India.
Enhancing agricultural activity offers the only way of
immediately and gainfully employing the people of India, and
putting to use the extraordinarily plentiful resources of land
and water that we have been endowed with. This is also the way
of removing hunger and poverty from the face of India. It is
common economic wisdom that for a populous country like India,
economic reconstruction has to begin with agriculture. The
enhanced economic resources and demand generated in
agriculture then drive growth in other sectors of economy.
India has however been trying to defy this common economic
wisdom. We have let production of foodgrains grow at a rate
barely sufficient to keep pace with the growth of population;
while concentrating our economic energies on achieving
substantial growth only in services, and to a lesser extent in
manufacture. This is a policy guaranteed to perpetuate hunger.
Since economic arguments have failed to change the planners of
India from this disastrous course, the Centre for Policy
Studies decided to shift the level of discussion to the plane
of collective morality, ethics and dharma. In an exhaustive
study of the classical Indian position on food and hunger, we
showed that assuring an abundance of foodgrains and sharing of
food amongst not only men but also all other created beings,
so that none within the polity remains hungry, has been the
primary principle of righteous public functioning, the
primary dharma, of India. This study, published under the
title, Annam Bahu Kurvita: Recollecting the Indian Discipline
of Growing and Sharing Food in Plenty, was presented before
the highest Acharyas of India in a sadas held at Sri Tirumala
Kshetra. From that divinely sanctified Kshetra, the gathered
Acharyas declared that re-establishing the dharma of
annabahulya and annadana, the discipline of ensuring abundance
in production and sharing of food, should be the first
national priority today. A report of the deliberations of this
sadas is being published in a companion volume.
Following the call of the Acharyas, the high political leaders
of India cutting across all party affiliations met in a
seminar at the Parliament House Annex on August 13, 1997, two
days before the fiftieth anniversary of Indian Independence.
The seminar was organised at the initiative of the Centre for
Policy Studies, Chennai and the Observer Research Foundation,
Delhi. This volume is a report of the proceedings of this
seminar.
The leaders gathered at Delhi to further deliberate on the
advice of the Acharyas included several who had ruled
Independent India for long and others who were soon to ascend
to rulership. Amongst the latter, there were, Sri Atal Behari
Vajpayee, the present prime minister of India; Sri Lal Krishna
Advani, the home minister of India; Sri Murli Manohar Joshi,
the union minister for human resource development; Sri Nitish
Kumar, the union minister for agriculture, and Srimati Uma
Bharti, the union minister for sports and youth affairs. Sri
Chaturanan Mishra, the then union minister for agriculture,
inaugurated the meeting. Sri Chandra Shekhar, former
prime-minister of India; Sri Pranab Mukherjee, former finance
minister of India and former deputy chairman of the planning
commission; and Sri Ajit Singh, former union minister for
food, addressed the meeting. Besides them Sri Nawal Kishore
Sharma and Sri Jitendra Prasada of the Indian National
Congress, Sri D. Raja of the Communist Party of India; Sri G.
K. Moopanar of the Tamil Manila Congress were also
represented.
The former, current and future rulers of India gathered in
this meeting agreed that India continued to live with scarcity
of food, and consequently a significant proportion of Indians
continued to suffer from hunger and malnutrition even after
fifty years of independence. Sri Atal Behari Vajpayee recalled
how during a visit to Soviet Union as a union minister in the
first Janata government, he and his colleague in the cabinet
and later prime-minister of India, Inder Kumar Gujral, had
made the error of asserting before Mr. Kosygin, the then
prime-minister of the Soviet Union, that India had achieved
sufficiency in food, and how Mr. Kosygin had spent almost an
hour convincing them that to make such a claim India needed to
produce much more.
Sri Murli Manohar Joshi reminded the audience that India was a
civilisation of sharing while that of the West was based on
competitive consumption. It is dangerous for such diverse
civilisations to develop mutual trade in an essentially
ethical good like food. And, he warned the participants of the
havoc that bringing agriculture under the thumb of global
trading regimes was likely to cause. Sri Pranab Kumar
Mukherjee declared that he had no hesitation in agreeing with
the Centre’s perception that per capita availability of food
in India remained highly inadequate, and there was a need for
making a quantum jump in our food production. He reminded the
participants that India was a large country, and no country of
the world could possibly produce the surplus necessary to meet
the Indian deficit. He went on to say that during his days in
the planning commission he had tried to make the commission
undertake the necessary effort to raise agricultural
production to a significantly higher level, but he had failed
to convince the ‘experts’. Sri Ajit Singh and Sri Nitish Kumar
asserted that there could be no development of India without
the development of Indian agriculture. Sri Chaturanan Mishra
and Sri D. Raja emphasised the need for greatly improving
distribution of food to ensure sufficiency of food for all.
Sri Chandra Shekhar forcefully asserted that questions of food
and hunger were not such as might be left to the vagaries of
the market and there was nothing shameful or wrong in a
government spending from the public funds to feed the hungry.
He offered to do everything within his capacity to help any
effort directed at enhancing the production of food and
assuaging hunger in India. Srimati Uma Bharati also offered
her services for the cause with deep feeling.
Sri Lal Krishna Advani said that it was a matter of great
shame that scarcity of food and hunger persisted in India
after fifty years of Independence and declared that, “When we
part from here, the precarious situation of India in matters
of food and hunger shall be etched on our mind, and we shall
part with the resolution that notwithstanding the various
ideological differences we have amongst ourselves, we need to
come together to solve such problems. I request you to value
this feeling…”
With the leaders of India representing all shades of opinion
committing themselves to the cause with such emphatic
feelings, it seemed that India would soon launch into a great
movement to generate an abundance of food all around. And,
that the scourge of scarcity and hunger that had clouded the
face of India for the last couple of centuries would be lifted
soon.
The commitments and assertions seem to have led to no action.
The situation of India in matters of food and hunger seems to
have worsened in the last three years. Production has remained
stagnant. Offtake of food from the public distribution system
has declined. And opening up of India to global trading in
food threatens to further restrict and destabilise the
cultivation of food in India.
We are publishing the proceedings of the seminar to remind our
national leaders of what they had said on the solemn occasion
of the fiftieth anniversay of Independence, about the
situation of India concerning food and hunger. We hardly need
to say that a country that carries the sin of hunger and
malnutrition of many can hardly expect to advance to any
higher state of physical or spiritual well being. The problem
of food and hunger has to be addressed before the task of
nation building can begin with any seriousness.
We continue to cherish the fond hope that the nation shall
soon undertake resolute action to fulfil the primary dharma of
ensuring an abundance of food and sharing.
We are thankful to the senior national leaders and others who
agreed to participate in the seminar on our request. We are
especially thankful to Sri R. K. Mishra of the Observer
Research Foundation, without whose personal interest and
commitment this seminar would not have been possible. And most
importantly, we pay our respectful obeisance to Sri
Vanamamalai Jeeyar Swamiji of Nanguneri, who graced the
occasion with his presence and blessings, and thus imparted it
a rare seriousness and sanctity.
Centre for Policy Studies, Chennai
Makra Sankranti, Kali 5102
January 14, 2001
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