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The objective of this paper is to study the food security system In India.

For this paper, many books and literature i.e. P.V Srinivasan, “Agriculture and Food Security”, R. Radhakrishna, “Food And Nutrition Security of the Poor” and Mishra and Puri, "Indian Economy" etc. has been reviewed.

Impact of food security system in India

At the global level, the South Asian region is a home to more chronically food insecure people than any other region in the world and India ranks 94th in the Global Hunger Index of 119 countries While famines and starvation deaths remain the popular representation of the contemporary problem of hunger, one of the most significant yet understated and perhaps less visible area of concern today is that of chronic or persistent food and nutrition insecurity. This is a situation where people regularly subsist on a very minimal diet that has poor nutrient and calorific content as compared to medically prescribed norms. The World Food Programme report uses various indicators, which directly or indirectly affect the Food security and nutritional status of a person. These are based on amount of calories consumed, access to safe drinking water and toilets, women and children who are anemic.

On the composite index of food insecurity of rural India, states like Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh are found is the ‘very high’ level of food insecurity, followed by Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat. The better performers include Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Madlya Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Karnataka, Orissa and Maharashtra perform poorly.

Even economically developed states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka find themselves in the category of high food insecurity-a reflection perhaps of the manifestation of the Agrarian crisis in the states and its consequent negative impact on the health and well-being of the rural population. "Nutrition security involving physical, economic and social access to balanced diet, clean drinking water, sanitation and primary health care for every child, woman and man is fundamental to giving all our citizens an opportunity for a healthy and productive life," said Professor MS Swaminathan, Chairman, MSSRF. Unless this aspect of food security is attended to with the involvement of local bodies, the food security situation in India will not show the desired improvement. Although the government have taken risqué steps to eradicate the problems of food security like to tackle the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the food security problem, the Government of India has relied on the following three food-based safety nets: (1) public distribution system (PDS), (2) Integrated child development serves (ICDS) and (3) mid-day meals programme (MDM) But these efforts are not enough.

Challenges

There are several challenges ahead to achieve the goal. India's food security policy has a laudable objective to ensure availability of foodgrains to the common people at an affordable price and it has enabled the poor to have access to food where none existed. The policy has focused essentially on growth in agriculture production (once India used to import Foodgrains) and on support price for procurement and maintenance of rice and wheat stocks. The responsibility for procuring and stocking of foodgrains lies with the FCI and for distribution with the public distribution system (PDS)

Minimum support price

The FCI procures foodgrains from the farmers at the government announced minimum support price (MSP).The MSP should ideally be at a level where the procurement by FCI and the off take from it are balanced. However, under continuous pressure from the powerful farmers lobby, the government has been raising the MSP and it has now become higher than what the market offers to the farmers. Also, with quality norms in the procured grains not strictly observed, farmers pressurize the FCI to procure grains beyond its procurement target and carrying capacity. The MSP has now become more of a procurement price rather than being a support price to ensure minimum production. The rich farmers have cornered most of the benefits under the support price policy. The small farmers lack access to FCI and being steeped in poverty resort as distress selling Constricted warehousing facility has further aggravated their miseries. At times, the same farmers later pay more to buy it from PDS.

Input subsidies

Over the years, to keep foodgrain prices at affordable levels for the poor, the government has been imposing restrictions on free trade in foodgrains. This has suppressed foodgrain prices in the local market, where the farmers sell a part of their produce and as compensation, they fare provided subsidies on agriculture inputs such as fertilizers, power and water. These subsidies have now reached unsustainable levels and also led to large scale inefficiencies in the use of these scarce inputs Overuse of fertilizer and water has led to waterlogging, salinity, depletion of vital micronutrients in the soil, and reduced fertility The high subsidies have come at the expense of public investments in the critical agriculture infrastructure, thereby reducing agriculture productivity. Besides the high MSP, input subsidies and committed FCI purchases have distorted the cropping pattern with wheat and paddy crops being grown more for the MSP they fetch, despite there being relatively less demand for them. Punjab and Haryana are classic examples here. This has also led to a serious imbalance in inter-crop parties despite no significant increase in the yield of wheat and paddy.

Issue price

The people are divided into two categories: below poverty line (BPL) and above poverty line (APL), with the issue price being different for each category. However, this categorisation is imperfect and a number of deserving poor have been excluded from the BPL. fold Moreover, some of the so called APL slip back to BPL, say with failure of even one crop and it is administratively difficult to accommodate such shifts.

To reduce the fiscal deficit, the government has sought to curtail the food subsidy bill by raising the issue price of foodgrains and linking it to the economic cost at which the FCI supplies foodgrains to the PDS. The economic cost comprises the cost of procurement, that is, MSP storage, transportation and administration and is high mainly because of the artificially inflated MSP and also due to the operational inefficiencies of the FCI. This has pushed the issue price to APL category higher than the market rates and to BPL category beyond their purchasing power, resulting in plummeting of offlake from the PDS

Also, the low quality of PDS grains and the poor service at PDS shops have forced many people to switchover to market, which offers better quality grains, allows purchase on credit and ensures flexibility to purchase in small quantities.

Also, the high-priced low quality Indian rice and wheat find little place in the international market. Recently, two Indian consignments were rejected even by iraq on quality consideration. The result is bulging stocks with FCL amidst widespread starvation.

Market demand

The PDS entitlement meets only around 25 percent of the total foodgrain requirement of a BPL family and it has to depend more on the market for meeting its needs. Also with the APL Families essentially opting for market purchases the market demand has risen. However, the massive FCI procurement has crowded out the market supplies, resulting in a relativerise in rates. The poor are the most hurt in this bargain.

Food-for-work scheme

The government is running food-for-work scheme to give purchasing power to the poor who get paid for their labour in cash and foodgrains. The scheme is, however, not successful, since the central Government is required to meet only the foodgram component and the cash strapped states are expected to meet the cash component (almost 50 per cent of the total expenditure). In many states the scheme has even failed to take off.

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2. Government of India Planning Commission Tenth Five Year Plan, 2002-07 (Delhi, 2003). Volume II. p. 367.
3. P.V Srinivasan, “Agriculture and Food Security”,in Shovan Ray (ed). Handbook of Agriculture in India (New Delhi), 2007, p. 130
4. Mishra and Puri, Indian Economy, Himalaya Publishing House, Mumbai
5. R. Radhakrishna, “Food And Nutrition Security of the Poor,” Economic and Political Weekly April 30, 2005, p. 1817.
6. Tata statical, Outline of India 2003-2004. A.S Vadilvala, Mumbai Yojna