How far do you agree with the view that the focus on lack of availability of food as the main cause of hunger takes the attention away from ineffective human development policies in India?
Subtopic: Social Justice · hunger, food security and human development
How to structure your answer
Written within the word limit
265 words · target 250 words · 14 min
India produces well over 330 million tonnes of foodgrain and FCI stocks have often exceeded buffer norms, yet the Global Hunger Index 2024 places India 105th of 127 countries and NFHS-5 records 35.5 per cent stunting and 19.3 per cent wasting among under-fives. This coexistence vindicates Amartya Sen's insight that famines and hunger are failures of entitlement, not availability — I therefore substantially agree with the view.
Hunger as a Human-Development Failure
- Access: poverty and volatile incomes limit purchasing power despite full godowns; PDS leakages and exclusion errors weaken delivery.
- Absorption: unsafe water, poor sanitation and repeated infections prevent nutrient absorption — stunting tracks WASH indicators, not merely food supply.
- Women's status: maternal undernutrition, anaemia in 57 per cent of women aged 15–49, and early marriage transmit hunger across generations.
- Dietary quality: a cereal-centric PDS ignores proteins and micronutrients, producing 'hidden hunger'.
- Service delivery: immunization, antenatal care and nutrition counselling — classic human-development inputs — determine outcomes more than grain output.
Where Availability Still Matters
Deficits in pulses and oilseeds, regional and seasonal gaps, and climate shocks affect real prices; availability arguments guard against complacency but cannot explain child undernutrition amid overflowing stocks. The pandemic years made the point starkly: free foodgrain under PMGKAY averted destitution, yet grain transfers alone could not move the needle on stunting or anaemia — food availability is not nutrition policy.
Conclusion
The corrective lies in nutrition-sensitive governance: diversifying the NFSA basket with millets and fortified grains, converging Poshan 2.0 and PM POSHAN with Jal Jeevan Mission and Swachh Bharat, and investing in women's health and education. Treating hunger as a supply problem misdirects effort; it is chiefly a failure of human-development policy and entitlement delivery.
What an examiner expects to see
- Open with the paradox: record foodgrain output and buffer stocks above norms alongside GHI 2024 rank 105/127 and NFHS-5 stunting (35.5%) and wasting (19.3%) — availability is clearly not the binding constraint.
- Anchor the argument in Amartya Sen's entitlement approach: hunger is about what people can command, not what the economy produces.
- Access failures: poverty, income volatility, PDS leakages and exclusion errors.
- Absorption failures: WASH deficits and disease burden block nutrient absorption — a pure human-development variable.
- Intergenerational channel: women's anaemia (57% of women 15–49), maternal undernutrition and early marriage.
- Hidden hunger from cereal-centric food policy — protein and micronutrient deficits despite calorie sufficiency.
- Concede the availability margin: pulses/oilseeds gaps, regional deficits, climate shocks.
- Conclude with convergence: NFSA diversification (millets, fortification), Poshan 2.0, PM POSHAN, JJM/SBM linkage, women-centred interventions.
Concrete cases, schemes and judgments
- Global Hunger Index 2024: India 105th of 127, in the 'serious' category, despite being a net food exporter.
- NFHS-5 (2019–21): 35.5% stunting, 19.3% wasting, 32.1% underweight among under-fives; 57% of women 15–49 anaemic.
- Amartya Sen's study of the 1943 Bengal famine — hunger amid adequate food availability, a failure of entitlements.
- FCI stocks have repeatedly exceeded buffer norms even as hunger indices stayed poor.
- Shree Anna push and fortified rice distribution under NFSA as diversification correctives; Poshan Abhiyan's convergence design.