HUNGER : A SERIOUS CONCERN FOR INDIA

" If you can't feed a hundred people then feed just one"

                              -Mother Teresa

Food plays a very vital role in our lives. It serves as a basic need for any human body, as we all know. But there is always a sad story regarding food and hunger crisis. In a country where unemployment, inflation and deaths are at a peak, how can we forget a problem like hunger crisis?. Did you know globally, more than 132 million people could go hungry in 2020 according to a report and the lockdown has made this situation even worse due to lower-earning and higher unemployment among vulnerable sections of the society. 

But, what are the causes of these crises? What is the situation in India? And what as a common people can do about this? let's see

CURRENT SITUATION OF INDIA

Global Hunger Index

If we talk about India, there is good news that India is one of the world's largest food producers. It produces 70 million metric tons of grains or almost 15% of the global stockpiles. But, ironically the country is also home to the largest population of hungry people and also one-third of the world's malnourished children. The Global Hunger Index ranks India 102nd among 117 countries and the worst-performing state in India was Madhya Pradesh.

Not only this, according to FAO estimates in 'the State Of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, 2020 report, 189.2 million people are undernourished in India. It's very sad to hear all these numbers as it is not acceptable from a country like India, which produces a tremendous amount of food in the world.

It will also be very sad to hear that, India is the top most country to waste an enormous amount of food in the world. Every year approximately 5000 crore of food goes wasted in India. To solve any problem it is essential to know its cause. So, the lack of food is not a cause of the hunger crisis, at least in India because we produce so much food every year. So what is the actual cause of it?

CAUSES OF HUNGER

The major root of hunger is not actually the lack of food but it is poverty. It is impossible for people to both live and eat with the same money. Poverty alone does not lead to malnutrition, but it seriously affects the availability of an adequate amount of nutritious food for the most vulnerable population. 

Another big problem people face is the delay of issue ration cards. By the law, the government is required to provide as many as 5 kg of rice, wheat and grains at subsidized rates to whoever needs it. But to get these food items, one needs to have government-issued ration cards and the delay in issuance of ration cards leads to many deaths. There are many people who are directly dependant on ration foods and thus there were many who lost their lives in lockdown just because their ration cards were not issued. The request of many people ration cards always stays on pending. It's only when someone who's already enrolled in the program dies or is otherwise deleted from the list does a spot open to issue a new card. The government should take these things seriously.

Hidden Food waste

Another major problem is the transportation of food. A large amount of food waste in India occurs during transportation of food. Nearly 40% of India's food remains unsold in the market, most of it is wasted and only because of lack in the supply chain. And another lack of cooling and storage facilities in India also means 20% of the entire food production gets lost before it reaches the market place. Such food items could be saved by timely withdrawing it from the distribution network, aggregating it and then redirecting it to the people in need. So, almost half of the food supply can be saved easily if there would be proper roads, proper trucks, proper storage system and even proper packaging of food items.

WHAT WE CAN DO?

The first step anyone can do is to reduce food wastage as much as possible. There are also number of steps you can follow to stop hunger crisis

•  Majority of the people whenever goes to any grocery store, they always ask for the good quality food items and nobody buys that food items which are even in a little bit of bad quality. At last, the grocery store ends up dumping a huge amount of food items in dustbins. So, this food wastage can be easily solved if there would be people to demand that ugly produce food items. Well, this might sound a bit stupid but if everyone will start doing this, it might create a huge difference in the country. So, what you can do is whenever you go to any grocery store to buy any food items, you can always ask to buy just one ugly produce food item. You can eat it if it is eatable or make use of it in some different work, feed it to animals or if not you can cut it into pieces and put it in soil, it will make good manure of it. You can make good use of it by following this step because anyhow your food vendor is going to dump it into the dustbin.
• Secondly, most of the food vendors aren't aware of donating the food. So, we can aware them about donating their leftover food to the needy ones.
• Thirdly, there are many NGO's who takes leftover food and donate them to the needy ones, that too free of cost. So, you can contact them if you see any wastage of food at any wedding or public gatherings.

CONCLUSION

Food security has always been a serious challenge for India. When we waste food, we not just waste food, we waste land, water and the labour that used to grow that food. We waste so much that it has become a major cause of deforestation, depletion of fish from the ocean and biodiversity loss. The most important thing is before following any of the above steps, you need to check your bin first. Firstly, there should be no wastage of food from your house then only take the next step to aware others. So, you need to take your first step if you want people to follow you because Indian people know hunger very well and I don't want to create a negative image of India on poverty. I want further generations to read about hunger issues in history books. So, the first step against hunger crisis starts with your home and with 'you'.

References

https://www.financialexpress.com/economy/crores-of-indians-locked-out-of-ration-card-system-that-provides-cheap-food-starvation-deaths-haunt-poor/2109647/

https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/v3oxbQOyI8lq3726JVWyGL/Opinion--How-India-can-overcome-the-zero-hunger-challenge.html