Food for Thought

We have come a long way as a nation in our battle against poverty and hunger but our commitment to a more comprehensive solution is suspect

Last Independence Day, Raghubar Das, the Chief Minister of Jharkhand, celebrating his government’s achievements, declared that they had saved crores of rupees in the Public Distribution System by deleting over 1.1 million ‘bogus’ ration cards. Within six weeks of his grand announcement, Santoshi Kumari, an 11-year old Dalit girl from Simdega died of starvation. Her family’s ration card had been cancelled in the deletion drive the Chief Minister had been celebrating. The state government denied any responsibility. In fact, they claimed she died due to malaria (even as they suspended the local ration dealer and recommended action against a food department official). Ultimately, the government more or less admitted that the so-called ‘savings’ included cancelled rations card, such as those of Santoshi’s family.

Since Santoshi, there have been 13 more hunger-related deaths in Jharkhand and at least two each in Odisha and Uttar Pradesh. Earlier, three Dalit brothers died of hunger in Karnataka. In late July, two independent post-mortem reports confirmed the death from starvation of three sisters in Delhi.

The last time that widespread hunger-related deaths were reported was in 2001-02—from Rajasthan, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh. Some commentators like to cite this as evidence that nothing has changed, that people continue to die of hunger despite “increased government spending”, it seems, on social security programmes. But those facts are wrong and the line of reasoning is flawed: in fact, government spending has not increased (in percentage of GDP terms) and yet things have in fact got better. While it’s hard to ignore the failings of the Indian state in the realm of socialprotection policies, it is disingenuous to ignore the distance we have travelled in effecting change.

HOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED…

For one, over the past two decades, the share of households with access to the Public Distribution System (PDS) has increased significantly (from half to two-third of the population). Two, ‘leakages’ from the PDS have decreased, especially in the poorest and most corrupt states. Even in states like Jharkhand and Odisha, where, in the early 2000s, more than half the grain was diverted to the open market, most households now get most of their entitlement per month. In other words, more people are getting more from the PDS than before.

Official data shows that in 2009-10, transfers to poor households of subsidised PDS grain reduced the ‘poverty gap’ (the distance between what poor households have/ spend and the poverty line) by 20 per cent at the all-India level. Better performing states like Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh managed to bridge that gap by more than 50 per cent through PDS transfers. The same study shows that for every rupee transferred to PDS households, the government spends Rs 2.7, including government expenditure on procuring grain from farmers and administrative costs—besides subsidies to consumers. Perhaps it’s time to forget that well-remembered Rajiv Gandhi line: only 15 paise out of every rupee spent by the government reaches people.

Such improvements are not confined to the PDS. In the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), estimates suggest the siphoning of wages reduced sharply after bank payments were introduced in 2008-09. On the other hand, a handful of studies document the wide-ranging assets created where the programme was implemented well. For instance, wells have been constructed, land-levelling has increased area under cultivation, small rural connectivity and water-harvesting projects have benefitted economic and non-economic activities in rural areas.

Another area of improvement has been the support schemes for children: mid-day meals

THE STARVATION DEATHS, THOUGH DEEPLY TRAGIC, ARE NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE BIGGER BATTLE, WHICH IS AGAINST MEAGRE BUDGET ALLOCATIONS FOR WELFARE SCHEMES

and anganwadis. Viewed across a 20-year time span, the improvements are considerable: the very fact that mid-day meals have become a part of the daily routine all over India was unthinkable in 2001 when the Supreme Court cracked the whip on states that didn’t provide cooked food.

In June 2002, I was in Barmer when Rajasthan fell in line with the Supreme Court order. At the time, children were fetching wood and water, teachers were cooking food, and the ‘meal’ itself—boiled wheat with salt/ sugar or ghooghri—was nothing to write home about. Over the years, states have hired cooks and helpers, and the central government has funded construction of kitchen sheds, installation of water pumps and supply of utensils. The most significant achievement has been the gradual improvement of the food itself: despite resistance from various quarters, many states now provide eggs to children. In the Indian context, eggs are nothing short of superfood—not to mention a rare treat for most students in government schools.

…AND HOW THEY HAVE NOT

We must remember that hunger-related deaths, which make all the headlines, are an extreme form of deprivation. Having said that, India’s record on nutrition outcomes remains indifferent, suggesting that ‘hunger’, in 2018, is still pervasive. Boiled rice, with chillies or potatoes and watery dal at best—on a daily basis—remains the staple for far too many still.

To make matters worse, there’s limited space for these issues in mainstream media, which might, at the dictates of the news cycle, displace “yet another starvation death” with some nonsensical, attention-seeking remark by some prominent political leader (“no one saw a monkey become a man” or somesuch).

The media narrative about programmes of government support has barely changed over the years. It’s the same old, outdated, regionally biased caricature of the situation that prevailed in the north Indian plains in the 1990s. In spite of robust evidence to the contrary, in the broad perception of mainstream media, the public distribution system remains ‘corrupt’ and ‘leaky’; NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) is only about ‘digging holes and filling them up’; mid-day meals are still ‘cooked by teachers and hinder teaching’.

Trashing all forms of government support remains a media setpiece, even more so with the business media. The preferred—and handy—technique is to label all government support as ‘doles’ or ‘freebies’, and anyone who raises the concerns of the poor a ‘povertarian’—a most damning shorthand for people supposedly well-served by continuing poverty, hunger and under-nutrition.

For sure, media must bring to light loopholes, leakages and other problems in welfare programmes, but so should it try to paint a fair, balanced and true picture. For people who do not have direct exposure to these programmes, media plays a vital role in opinion formation, and focusing on the problems alone creates a distorted picture. This is partly the cause of the widespread cynicism today.

The cynicism undermines support for such programmes among those sections of society that provide critical resources—not only through tax contributions but also in terms of broad-based support, which is crucial to build a political consensus. The unchanging media narrative raises questions about its class and caste mix and the failings of corporate-owned media.

The constant assault on these programmes means that political commitment to them remains half-hearted. (Public spending in India on health and education is lower than even sub-Saharan African countries.) The chart overleaf (See: Not a Nanny State)shows how public expenditure on these programmes has stagnated over the tenures of the past three governments. It also shows how niggardly our social spending is—not something one would guess from the number of times one encounters the term ‘nanny state’ in popular commentary.

THE ROAD AHEAD

It’s worth repeating that the starvation deaths we keep hearing about, though deeply tragic, are an unrepresentative part of a larger and more complex issue. The bigger battle, against meagre budget allocations and poor accountability—which stays off the headlines—is still on our hands. Government support is a lifeline for vulnerable people. And several states have, in fact, done the hard work of fixing their systems of social support—it shows in their human development indicators. The summary dissing of government support programmes—and the lobbing of terms such as ‘dole’ and ‘freebie’ and ‘povertarian’—have the unfortunate effect of stifling public debate and brushing aside issues that should concern us all. Freedom from poverty and hunger must be seen as a collective responsibility, because, as Orwell put it: “Either we all live in a decent world, or nobody does”.

GOVERNMENT SUPPORT IS A LIFELINE FOR THE VULNERABLE, AND THE SUMMARY REJECTION OF THESE EFFORTS TENDS TO STIFLE PUBLIC DEBATE ON ISSUES THAT SHOULD CONCERN US ALL