India holds the key

India holds the key
K.P. Fabian

The Fortune magazine updates from time to time, with commendable accuracy and punctuality, the list of the top richest and the media the world over unfailingly publish the list. There are millions of men and women who starve and millions of children who suffer from stunted brain growth owingto iodine deficiency. But, seldom do we hear of them through the media.The Economist of London comes out annually with an eminently readable state of the world report, but there is no mention anywhere there of the hungry millions. Yet, the `continent' of the hungry, in the evocative phrase of FAO Director General Dr. Jacques Diouf, who is visiting India this week, does exist. At present 790 million in the developing world and 34 million in the rest of the world, adding up to 824 million, exceeds the combined population of North America and Europe.

On reflection, it will be wrong to blame the media in general, or TheEconomist in particular, for neglecting to report on the starving millions.After all, the media are only a part of and hold mirror to society at large.Let us introspect: To what extent are we, the well-fed, interested in theplight of our fellow human beings who are not sure where the next meal comesfrom? As a matter of fact, the whole United Nations system, till recently,did not have a proper mechanism for inter-agency coordination to collect andcollate data on hunger at the global level.

It is to the credit of the FAO that it took the initiative in this regardand has come out last year with its report on the State of Food Insecurityin the World. The report which contains a wealth of information was preparedas part of the follow-up to the 1996 Food Summit held in Rome on theinitiative of FAO. Governments from 186 countries attended that summit.India, as a country, has the largest number of the undernourished, 204million, followed by China at 164 million. As a region, South Asia accountsfor 284 million, which works out to more than one-third of the world total.With South East and East Asia having 30 per cent of the world total, it follows that Asia has more hungry human beings than the rest of the world combined. According to data collected between 1987 and 1998, two out of the five children in the developing world are stunted, one in three is underweight and one in 10 is wasted.

The FAO report addresses itself to the question of the progress made sincethe 1996 Summit. It might be recalled that the Summit had decided that thenumber of the hungry which was reckoned at 830 million in the developingworld at the time should be reduced by half by the year 2015. In otherwords, in round figures, every year we should have seen a reduction of 20million in the number of the hungry. As against this, the actual reductionhas been of the order of 8 million only over a period of five years.

Is there enough food in the world? Yes, Mahatma Gandhi, gifted with hisnon-academic but profound insight, was right when he said that there wasenough in the world for everybody's need, though not for some people'sgreed. In his foreword to the FAO report quoted above Director GeneralJacques Diouf says: "It is my conviction that there is no reason not to havea hunger-free world some time in the next century. The world already producesenough food to feed the people who inhabit it today. And it could producemore. However, unless deliberate action is taken at all levels, the chancesare that hunger and malnutrition will continue in the foreseeable future".

If the world produces enough food to go round and if about 18 per cent of humanity suffer from hunger, it follows that there should be a large number of people who eat more than they should. According to the Institute's `State of the World 2000', of which more than a million copies have been sold in more than 30 languages, the number of the hungry comes to 1.2 billion; anequal number of people are overfed and another 2 billion people have seriousmicro-nutrient deficiency in their diet. Therefore, the total number of themalnourished, including the over-nourished too in that category, comes to4.4 billion out of a world population of six billion.

We all now know, thanks to Amartya Sen, that hunger is seldom caused by theabsence of food. Till he pointed out the obvious, there was a mistaken butrather widespread belief that hunger was always associated with the lack offood. It is poverty which is the underlying cause of hunger. Nearly 80 per cent of all malnourished children in the developing world live in countries which are food-surplus. Hunger is a result of human decisions as much as wealth is. Therefore, hunger can be eliminated if correct decisions are taken. But Amartya Sen was absolutely right in pointing out the obvious, as at times the obvious is not noticed.

While it is true that the world produces enough food to go round, it doesnot follow that it is only a question of distribution. Suppose NorthAmerica and Australia were to increase their wheat production. Does itfollow that that extra wheat can be distributed to wheat-deficientcountries? No. It is necessary for the food-deficit countries to produce most of their food requirements. The farmers in these countries have to beempowered and there is vast scope for South-South cooperation in thisregard. The FAO embarked on a programme of South-South Cooperation in 1996.Under this scheme, an advanced developing country sends technicians andexperts to a low-income-food deficit country to work there for a period oftwo or three years. In a personal conversation, the FAO Director General hastold me that if a country such as India or China can give a few thousandsuch technicians and experts willing to work in the field, not in theoffices, millions in the recipient country would be benefited. India hassigned an agreement with FAO and Eritrea in this regard. By July 2000, 14such agreements have been signed.

Twenty six years ago, at an inter-governmental meeting in Rome HenryKissinger, representing the United States, said, to the applause of theassembled delegates, that in 10 years' time no child should go hungry tobed. This remains the central challenge for us, especially since we callourselves Homo Sapiens Sapiens. In 1900, humanity consumed an equivalent of$1.5 trillion. The figure rose to 4.0 in 1950, 12 in 1975 and 24 in 1998.If only our compassion and judgement had increased at a similar pace!

The writer is India's permanent representative to the FAO and ambassador to Italy