Questioning economic success through the lens of Hunger
Devaki Jain *
In this paper we unfold how provisioning food security for all, a universal right to food, or as Sen and Dreze put it, ensuring freedom from hunger[1] can rebuild the route towards a more humane political economy. Looking at the political economy through the lens of food fits the feminist concept of the intersectionality of all disciplines or paths – food under the human security rubric[2] as well as under human rights[3]and environment safeguarded development/economic growth.[4] We build our case or we illustrate our argument by analyzing the Indian experience.
We suggest that at this time, when there are many serious threats to human security – such as global warming, the water crisis, increases in inequality and extreme poverty – there is need for a wholesome and holistic approach to building a peaceful and just world.
We suggest that the ideas that Gandhi provided for economic growth and people’s wellbeing are most appropriate for reconsideration at this time. There is completeness in the programme he offered to India and the world at the turn of the twentieth century. At this time of global turbulence and questioning, and the return of conflict and violence, apart from gross inequality, his formulas are relevant.
What the world economy has experienced in the last two years is not just a global downturn in growth of GDP. It is a set of linked crises, some dimensions of which, relating to food and fuel crisis and climate change, predate the financial crisis that erupted in September 2008.[5]The meltdown of 2008-2009 has shaken the world in many ways; it made clearer the different levels of the crisis which is not only economic but is tied to an ecological, ethical, and food crisis, aggravated by the tensions around access to and provision of care for most households and communities in the world. It has exacerbated the challenges of feeding the world,[6] of obtaining clean waterleading to an increasing burden for women in fetching and accessing water,[7] to energy shortages,[8] and to climate change and ecological disasters.[9]
Food has been a central issue in feminist explorations of identity and stigma , of intra household power dynamics – hence offers space for feminist interrogation .
Food is also central to political strategies of the state as well as the household. In both of these spaces gender dynamics get played out in various ways. Hence the choice of food as the entry point for this exploration
Using India as the landscape, and food – or better still hunger as the entry point/issue, this paper critically explores the reasons for what can be called the Indian paradox, “mountains of food and millions of starving citizens “ ,
and suggests:
- that measures of economic success be it GDP growth rates , capital inflows, trade values , and the exclusion , lack of recognition of the various non market, non monetized values, -misleads , misdirects national efforts to redress hunger and poverty and
- that without the underpinning of a political and ethical philosophy towards economic justice such contradictions will persist despite pro poor and welfaristic policies .
Feminist analysis and hunger – the link .
In a paper[10] written for the Beijing plus 15 meetings at the UN , in March 2010, the informal group , called the Casablanca group, proposed that the global meltdown , crises of contemporary developmentthatwas highlighted in 2009-10 was not only of finance and employment but also deprivation of food, water, energy, fuel and care; and growing environmental devastation -.phenomena or problems that had been growing for decades even before the Lehman Bros event .
Further responding to the devastating food crisis that also appeared in full fury in the same years, the Casablanca group pointed out that food economies are by and large led by women farmers, adding that
“In many developing countries, women make up over half of the agricultural work force. In some countries they are the majority of farmers.”
But there is a gender caste operating here , whose case for recognition as farmers is still a submerged issue - even when she commits suicide, it is not seen as 'a farmer's suicide'. While women who produce “our” food are adulated, but like domestic work, it is taken for granted, and even seen as a cultural value in patriarchal societies .
The distribution of land rights, and of public investment and regulation of markets (including international markets) needs to take note of these aspects of women as farmers, for them to be able to enjoy the recognition as well as to make their contribution to food security .
Further it needs to be recognized that the rural woman now is not only a rural citizen, she is also the urban poor migrant and road construction worker, the migrant to other lands in search of work, and so on. The sectoral interest has moved from agriculture and food and water and livelihood to making a mark in the world through percentage of tradable, foreign exchange reserves and military power.
Thus the Casablanca group continued, “It will not be enough simply to distribute more land to individual women farmers. There would be need to direct the entire economy towards support to small farms and the kind of farming that women engage in . If the current trend is followed then in the space of a couple of decades, land would be concentrated in the hands of large commercial farmers. Better land rights for women need to be embedded in a system of equitable public support. “
In other words they pointed to the link between women’s roles and values in a political economy and the changes in macro economic policy that are required . A complete re-orientation of the production schema , ie the role/location/ shareof agriculture in the GDP, thereby a revision in the selection or prioritization of the triggers of economic success , including the political philosophy underpinning such a policy , would be necessary conditions for freedom from hunger for all .
2.The Indian paradox is interesting to study not only because the Indian economy has been witnessing very high rates of growth in the current decade but also because the Indian state has engaged itself with the presence of poverty and hunger for decades . Further despite deep flaws in its performance it does function under the rule of law and continues to have space for the affirmation of rights , free press etc the characteristics of an embedded democratic nation .
The real GDP in 2004 was 10.3 times what it was in 1978 and in the post-liberalisation period since 1994, the country's rate of growth of GDP has gone up from a mere five per cent to around 8.5 per centper annum. India managed to keep up a growth rate of around 6% even during 2009 and in 2010 is building it up to reach 8 % again.
However India’s excellent growth has had little impact on food security[11] and nutrition levels of its population. Per capita availability as well as consumption of foodgrains has decreased; cereal intake of the bottom 30 percent continues to be much less than the cereal intake of the top two deciles of the population, and calorie consumption of the bottom half of the population has been consistently decreasing since 1987.
The rich get hungrier, says Amartya Sen[12] .answering his own question"...will the food crisis that is menacing the lives of millions ease up - or grow worse over time? He says “Though the need for huge rescue operations is urgent, the present acute crisis will eventually end. But underlying it is a basic problem that will only intensify unless we recognize it and try to remedy it. It is a tale of two peoples. In one version of the story, a country with a lot of poor people suddenly experiences fast economic expansion, but only half of the people share in the new prosperity. The favored ones spend a lot of their new income on food, and unless supply expands very quickly, prices shoot up. The rest of the poor now face higher food prices but no greater income, and begin to starve. Tragedies like this happen repeatedly in the world.”
More than half of India’s women and three-quarters of children are anaemic with no decline in the last eight years. In short, all indicators point to the hard fact that endemic hunger continues to afflict a large proportion of the Indian population, with the usual special assault on the female of the species .
India is now home to the world's largest hungry population (nearly 50% of the world’s hungry). India’s hunger record is worse than that of nearly 25 sub-Saharan African countries. Despite the Targeted Public Distribution System[13][PDS}India is ranked 65th (GHI: 23.80 ‘Alarming’) among 88 vulnerable countries in the Global Hunger Index prepared by the International Food Policy Research Institute[14] and none of its States is categorised under 'low hunger' or 'moderate hunger category'. [15] Around 35 percent of India's population - 350 million - are considered food-insecure, consuming less than 80 percent of minimum energy requirements.[16]India’s poor rural population has 230 million people being undernourished — the highest for any country in the world. Malnutrition accounts for nearly 50% of child deaths in India as every third adult (aged 15-49 years) is reported to be thin (BMI less than 18.5).[17] Here too there is almost vulgar inequality.
Along with this situation of terrible food deprivation, there is also growing inequalities in India, related very specifically to this post “reform” period. .
Within India the narrow base of economic growth focussed on the service economy has meant that trickle-down theories of the spread of prosperity have remained confined to the sphere of illusions and there has been a sharp and appalling rise in inequality. Until 1993-1994, the all-India Gini coefficient of per capita consumption expenditure was fairly stable but has shown a marked increase since then. The magnitude and rate of change of inequalities is quite substantial as very sharp contrasts are evident between the rural sectors of the slow growing states and the urban sectors of the fast growing states[18] This rise in the incidence of rural poverty and inequality has implied that, despite better growth, poverty reduction has been sluggish.[19] Multiple inequalities lock in income levels of the poor, disadvantaged and populations in backward area, and the trickle down effects of growth is limited to the margins of the high growing enclaves and urban conglomerations.[20]
These inequalities are reflected in a number of ways for example fifty million Indian under fives are affected by malnutrition. Rising food prices, Unicef says mean 1.5 to 1.8 million more children in India could end up malnourished.[21] With its high maternal mortality of about 300-500 per 100,000 births, about 75,000 to 150,000 women die every year in India after giving birth, according to WHO. And if we delve deeper again the story of inequality becomes evident- for example in one study showed that over 67% of maternal deaths occurred among the oppressed castes and in indigenous population; in another district it was noted that 48% of the women who had died had no formal schooling.[22]
Figure 2:
Multiple inequalities lock in income level
Figure from Abhijit Sen, Himanshu Poverty and Inequality in India–II Widening Disparities during the 1990s Economic and Political Weekly September 25, 2004 pg4366
A recent study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-WIDER) on the World Distribution of Household Wealth[23] takes wealth (rather than mere income) as the parameter and finds resounding evidence that the distribution of wealth is highly concentrated — in fact much more concentrated than the world distribution of income. It also states in unequivocal terms that “corporate globalisation has been marked by greatly increased disparities, both within countries and between countries.”[24]A recent World Bank study reveals that between 1820 and 1992 the income share of the bottom 60 per cent of the world’s population halved to around 10 per cent while the share of the top 10 per cent rose to more than 50 per cent. [25]
The rise in inequality appears to be the result of three factors (i) a shift in earnings from labour to capital income, (ii) the rapid growth of the services sector – particularly the FIRE (finance, insurance and Real estate) sectors – with a consequent explosion in demand for skilled workers and (iii) a drop in the rate of labour absorption during the reform period.
The gender dimension further complicates this – women most often do not share in the wealth of men, even within the same household or family.[26] Therefore the gender distribution of wealth matters. The deep widespread asymmetrical gender relationships lead women to experience greater inequality than men, and similarly not only are more women poor, but their experience of poverty is also marked different.
High economic growth rates have failed to improve food security in India leaving the country facing a crisis in its rural economy, warns a report released by the World Food Programme.[27]The report says that the number of undernourished people is rising, reversing gains made in the 1990s. Slowing growth in food production, rising unemployment and declining purchasing power of the poor in India are combining to weaken the rural economy.
Yet with a network of more than 0.4 million Fair Price Shops (FPS) claiming to annually distribute commodities worth more than Rs 150 billion to about 160 million families, the PDS [Public Distribution System[28] ]in India is perhaps the largest distribution network of its type in the world. These shops distribute a total of 35 kg of wheat and rice to about 65 million BPL[Below poverty line] families at Rs 4.2 per kg for wheat and Rs 5.6 for rice (present market rate is about double the PDS price). Another 25 million poorest families get 35 kg of foodgrains at a highly subsidized rate of Rs 2 per kg. for wheat and Rs 3 per kg for rice. In addition there are welfare schemes such as hot cooked mid-day meals (MDM) for school going children, and supplementary nutrition (SNP) for pre-school children.
3. What went wrong?
The suggestion here is that this situation in India, of gross inequality and of hunger and extreme poverty,is the result of the contagion, the disease that has come from the currently operating paradigm of progress .The globalization or trade and finance led, and GDP growth rate led, market and monetized value led path to economicsuccess. These methods, ideas for economic success such as rate of growth of GDP as the sign of success, and the moving away from farms andfarming, neglecting the enormous increase in disparities i.e. the neglect of the masses, are the contagion from the ideas that are operating in the management of the global economy not only in the decades since the 90s , but a continuum of the “modernisation“ project, the paradigm of progress as designed by the northern , the “advanced “countries, springing from the approach of the colonial powers .
Currently,India is experiencing the pressuresarising out of taking that imitative road – she has shifted her interest from the agricultural sector to the services and other sectors This shift in the share of the three sectors in GDP is a world wide phenomenon as can be seen through the tables below:
Diagram 1 below shows the shift in the GDP composition of India from 1973 to 2010[source NAS ][29]
Table 2: reflects the same issue, of shifts in the composition of the GDP at the global level – from agriculture to services from the 1970s to to 2001
Percent of economic activity by sector
Economic Activity - Agriculture / Economic Activity - Industry / Economic Activity - Service1970 / 1980 / 1990 / 2001 / 1970 / 1980 / 1990 / 2001 / 1970 / 1980 / 1990 / 2001
World / 27 / 7 / 5 / 4 / 32 / 38 / 33 / 29 / 41 / 55 / 62 / 67
Developed Countries / 7 / 4 / 3 / 2 / 35 / 37 / 33 / 26 / 58 / 59 / 65 / 72
Developing Countries / 27 / 17 / 15 / 11 / 32 / 42 / 36 / 37 / 41 / 41 / 49 / 52
UNCTAD Handbook of Statistics On-line
Table 3: It will be noticed that in all the categories labour has shifted downwards in Agriculture but more dramatically in the other regions than the developing countries
Labor Force in Agriculture
Total Labor Force(Millions) / Labor Force in
Agriculture
(Millions) / Percent of Labor
Force in Agriculture
1980 / 1990 / 2001 / 1980 / 1990 / 2001 / 1980 / 1990 / 2001
World / 2,051 / 2,498 / 2,993 / 1,067 / 1,221 / 1,327 / 52% / 49% / 44%
Developed Countries / 559 / 610 / 658 / 75 / 62 / 47 / 13% / 10% / 7%
Industrialized Countries / 364 / 408 / 448 / 29 / 23 / 16 / 8% / 6% / 4%
Transition Economies / 196 / 202 / 210 / 46 / 40 / 31 / 23% / 20% / 15%
Developing Countries / 1492 / 1887 / 2335 / 993 / 1,159 / 1,280 / 67% / 61% / 55%
Summary of Food and Agricultural Statistics 2003
This moving away from Agriculture it is argued has been responsible for the crisis in food security world wide. The UN in its report World Economic Situation and Prospects[30] estimates that the total number of food insecure people was probably closer to about three billion, or about half the population of the world. The early years of the 21st century has seen hungry people rioting in 37 countries. There is a shift towards greater market orientation at the macro level, which is also reflected at the micro level as well, with people moving more and more out of subsistence production and towards production for the market. This trend is also being reinforced by micro-level interventions, such as credit delivery programmes that encourage poor households to engage in market-oriented production.
Within India this crisis in agriculture is a direct offshoot of the shift in priorities during the early 1990s. Growing obsession with the so-called “new economy”, information technology, media and the urban consumer has led to the marginalization of the “rural” and agrarian sector, with respect to both private and public sector investment
One of the key factors that has been identified for this crisis is the shift in land use that has moved from agriculture to non-agriculture and simultaneously a greater proportion of the land used for agricultural purposes is now devoted to non-food agriculture.[31]One million hectares has gone out of cultivation in recent years in India and much more is threatened.
The most recent of these crimes, is the subsidies the Government of Maharashtra is offering for liquor production from food grains, especially jowar the cereal of poor households, and also a dry land crop. This policy will turn jowar into a cash crop and divert huge quantities of foodgrains to alcohol production, creating scarcity and causing food inflation. Moreover, Right to Information documents have revealed the extent to which the claims made by the government have been violated – good quality hybrid jowar, and distilleries are purchasing grains from dealers and not from farmers.