Feeding India

Livelihoods, Entitlements and Capabilities

Bill Pritchard, Anu Rammohan, Madhushree Sekher, S. Parasuraman, Chetan Choithani

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415529662
• eBook ISBN: 9781136304798
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Ecologia

Food security is one of the twenty-first century's key global challenges, and lessons learned from India have particular significance worldwide. Not only does India account for approximately one quarter of the world's under-nourished persons, it also provides a worrying case of how rapid economic growth may not provide an assumed panacea to food security.

This book takes on this challenge. It explains how India's chronic food security problem is a function of a distinctive interaction of economic, political and environmental processes. It contends that under-nutrition and hunger are lagging components of human development in India precisely because the interfaces between these aspects of the food security problem have not been adequately understood in policy-making communities. Only through an integrative approach spanning the social and environmental sciences, are the fuller dimensions of this problem revealed. A well-rounded appreciation of the problem is required, informed by the FAO's conception of food security as encompassing availability (production), access (distribution) and utilisation (nutritional content), as well as by Amartya Sen's notions of entitlements and capabilities.

1

INTRODUCTION

The Indian food security enigma

Raju (not his real name) is a married man in his late fifties who lives in a rural village in the state of Haryana, approximately 200 km north of New Delhi. Along with his wife, he was born in the village to a family without economic status or social privilege, and, through his entire life, has barely travelled out of his immediate surrounds. As he was the youngest of five children and without a mother (who died when he was an infant), Raju's childhood was defined by hard-scrabble existence. His father had six hectares on which he grew traditional cereal crops, but, without any access to irrigation, he was held to the mercy of the annual monsoon. Raju remembers that in the mud (“kacha”) house of his childhood his regular meal would be chapattis with chutney. Fresh fruits and vegetables were eaten only when he and his brothers were able to steal some from the fields of local landowners. He recalls “almost never” eating dal. The only source of protein he would receive was the milk from the one family buffalo. Sometimes, for two or three days, the family would eat only one meal a day, which would be chap-atti with salt. He has never attended a day of school in his life and is completely illiterate.

While in his twenties, Raju's father passed away and left a mountain of debt. Family squabbles over inheritance ensued, and the family's land was lost. Raju then worked as a field labourer, but now is too frail for heavy duties and so does only the occasional unpaid odd job for a local landowner (in exchange for which he is given grazing rights for his sole buffalo). His single daughter is married and lives in another village. Of his two sons, the elder has a regular job in a local store, and the other has been bonded to a local landowner for field labouring duties. When his second son has completed a year of work for the local landowner, Raju's family will receive Rs 40,000 (approximately US$800). Some aspects of Raju's life have improved. He now lives with his wife in a brick (“pucca”) house, and, for about half the day, has electricity to run a fan and lightbulbs. But their nutritional circumstances remain dire. The couple survives on a daily diet of chapatti, chutney, milk from the family buffalo, tea and sugar. They consume potatoes occasionally (usually provided as gifts from local landowners), and eat fresh vegetables and dal only rarely.

Raju's story was told to us in 2011 during a visit to his village in Haryana. By no means is it unusual. Indeed, it is emblematic of the life circumstances of millions of people across rural India. Two decades of dizzying economic transformation in India seem to have barely touched an enormous proportion of India's population. To walk through many of India's villages is to witness both the hope and betrayal of economic change. Trickle-down consumerism has led to small stores being swaddled in advertising banners for cell phone offers. Look upwards and every second house, it seems, has a satellite dish. New-model motorbikes dodge cows in crowded laneways. Chat with locals, and talk turns quickly to relatives in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Dubai or Frankfurt. But behind so many of the closed doors in those same villages live households barely surviving. Many people's existences remain bound by social relations that inscribe lives of drudgery, poverty and undernourishment.

To such observations, optimists would counter that India's contemporary “growth spurt” is barely two decades old, and the development challenge for a country as large as India should not be underestimated. These are fair points. Certainly it is not our intention to decry the very considerable economic achievements attained by India since the early 1990s. But yet, the recent Indian experience of growth remains troubling. Seen in international terms, India's GDP growth is contributing too anaemically to the reduction of poverty and food security. This failure has been labelled the Indian “enigma” (Ramalingaswami et al., 1996; Headey et al., 2011; Gillespie and Kadiyala, 2011; Walton, 2009).

The arithmetic of the Indian enigma is as follows. For most developing countries, the prevalence of children underweight for age (a good measure of under-nutri-tion) falls by roughly half the rate of GDP growth. Thus, if an economy's annual growth averages 4 per cent over a decade, the prevalence of children underweight for age would be expected to fall by 2 per cent annually (Haddad et al., 2003). India, however, has not followed this model. Had international trends applied to India, the nation's average annual GDP growth of 4.2 per cent between 1990 and 2005 should have reduced the prevalence of underweight children by 2.1 per cent annually, or 27 per cent in total over this 15-year period. In fact, this measure of food insecurity fell by just a meagre 10 per cent between 1990 and 2005 (Gillespie and Kadiyala, 2011). Thus, in India, booming economic growth has not reduced under-nutrition at the rate that might have been expected, had international experience applied. India is growing richer, but the spoils of that wealth are not fattening as many pockets and stomachs as comparative international expectations anticipate.

This problem contextualises this book. The notion of India as a food security enigma – a country whose recent experiences with regards to economic progress and hunger alleviation are seemingly at odds – suggests that the Indian case has international significance. For if booming India can make only weak progress in combating food insecurity, what hope is there for developing countries with more modest economic performances? What does the apparent intractability of India's food security problem tell us about the specifics of the Indian condition that may resonate (positively or negatively) elsewhere?

The contribution we make to this problem is to argue that the cause of food insecurity in India is not fundamentally about food per se, but about the extent to which the country's marginalised populations are empowered with the rights, freedoms and capabilities that enable them to attain healthy and nourished lives. Through this approach, the discourse on India's food insecurity enigma is recast as a problem of livelihoods. As suggested by Ramalingaswami et al. (1996), we see the roots of malnutrition in India running “deep into social soils”. Thus, what has been described as a food security problem in India requiring food policy solutions actually reflects the manifestations of a socially lop-sided development trajectory which requires broad-ranging, livelihood policy responses.

Interpreting the Indian food security enigma (i):
rights, freedoms and capabilities

It is an important moment in time to address the problem of food insecurity in India. Since the late 1990s, the concept of the right to food has gained heightened political and ideological significance, both in India and globally. The right to food is a concept in international treaties and humanitarian law that asserts individuals’ rights to live in dignity, free from hunger and under-nutrition. In 1999, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights specified three core principles for governments, in order that these rights be adhered to. These are the obligation to respect (not to take any measures that arbitrarily deprive people of their right to food), the obligation to protect (enforce appropriate laws and take other relevant measures to prevent third parties, including individuals and corporations, from violating the right to food of others) and the obligation to fulfil (that governments must proactively engage in activities intended to strengthen people's access to and utilisation of resources so as to facilitate their ability to feed themselves) (UNCESCR, 1999: 5; Ziegler, 2012). The following year, a Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food was appointed by the United Nations with responsibilities to monitor compliance and progress on these obligations. Then, in 2004, the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) Council gave further substance to this issue by adopting a set of 19 Voluntary Guidelines which specified how member states should ensure their right to food obligations are met (FAO, 2005).

From an Indian perspective, the appointment of the Special Rapporteur and the formulation of the FAO Voluntary Guidelines occurred contemporaneously with intensified domestic debate over these issues. This debate was triggered by the submission of a Writ Petition to the Supreme Court of India in April 2001 by People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), an umbrella civil society organisation. The writ – PUCL vs. Union of India and Others (Writ Petition [Civil] No. 196 of 2001) – argued that because Article 21 of the Indian Constitution enshrined the right to life, it followed that the Government of India had a constitutional responsibility to ensure all citizens had adequate food. Subsequent to the writ being lodged, the Supreme Court handed down a large number of Interim Orders which compelled the central and state Governments of India to take various actions in support of the right to food. These included such requirements as widening the eligibility criteria for public food distribution, ensuring people's awareness of their entitlement rights and the provisioning of midday meals in schools and child nutrition and health services provided through the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) (Jaishankar and Dreze, 2005). For compliance with these Orders, the Supreme Court appointed two commissioners, who were supported by a network of advisors across most states.

The combination of “top-down” considerations from the international (FAO) arena and “bottom-up” pressure from public interest litigation provided the catalyst for action from the Government of India. After the 2009 General Elections, the Congress-Party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government announced an intention to give national legislative backing to the right to food. In 2010, work commenced on drafting a Food Security Bill. Although the precise dimensions of the Government of India's food security legislation have not been resolved at the time of writing, the overarching premise of this legislative response is manifest: it makes protection against hunger a justiciable right, enabling legal action to be taken against the Government of India for shortcomings in the provisioning of people with food.

These rights-based perspectives on food are complemented by conceptualising food security through the notions of freedoms and capabilities. The right to food is a hollow concept unless it is linked to the question of whether people are able to exercise, agitate and act to ensure this right is met. This brings into the frame the need for a human-centred focus. The issue of food security is understood not in terms of how much food is produced, but, rather, whether and how those in need gain access to that food.

This general premise might appear beguilingly simple, but the application of a theoretical framework based around the concepts of freedoms and capabilities raises substantial and difficult economic, philosophical and moral concerns. As explored and developed in the career-long work of Amartya Sen (inter alia, Sen, 1981; 1985; 1987; 1988; 1992; 1999; 2009), deployment of these concepts requires review of core notions which are at the heart of how individuals are connected to society. These considerations begin with the issue of entitlements. Sen (1981) contends that the ownership and possession of goods are social acts which reflect ownership rights legitimised through reference to other ownership rights. Hence, in his famous example:

I own this loaf of bread. Why is this ownership accepted? Because I got it by exchange through paying some money I owned. Why is my ownership of that money accepted? Because I got it by selling a bamboo umbrella owned by me. Why is my ownership of the bamboo umbrella accepted? Because I made it with my own labour using some bamboo from my land. Why is my ownership of the land accepted? Because I inherited it from my father. Why is his ownership of that land accepted? And so on. Each link in this chain of entitlement relations ‘legitimizes’ one set of ownership by reference to another, or to some basic entitlement in the form of enjoying the fruits of one's own labour.

(Sen, 1981, pp. 1–2)

Based on this set of principles, Sen theorises how individuals possess particular endowed “ownership bundles” (their land, the financial resources, rights under law, their ability to be employed, their positions within networks of mutual obligation and responsibility, etc.), which enable the acquisition and exchange of goods and services, including food (Devereux, 2001: 246). Sen asserts that an appreciation of “exchange entitlement mapping” (the abilities or restrictions on individuals to create differently composed ownership bundles – exchanging their labour for cash, for example) is central to an understanding of individuals’ access to food resources.

The entitlements approach provides an analytical tool to help explain the social topography of food deprivation. But however useful this framework might promise, applied in isolation it contributes little in the way of normative assessment. It does not necessarily answer questions about how these outcomes might be evaluated. For this, it is necessary to move onto the concept of capabilities and the connected debate on freedoms and justice.

Through the capabilities approach, the entitlements with which individuals are endowed are interpreted in light of how they enable aspirations to be met. Hence, what matters is not the quantity of material possessions or abstract rights an individual has, but the extent to which this facilitates an enlargement of their capability space – “the extent of freedom people have to promote or achieve objectives they value” (Alkire, 2002: 4). This perspective places people at the analytical centre of research (Clark, 2009: 21). As Sen writes: “If a traditional way of life has to be sacrificed to escape grinding poverty or minuscule longevity, then it is the people directly involved who must have the opportunity to participate in deciding what should be chosen” (Sen, 1999: 31; see also Deneulin, 2006: 2).

Taking this a step further, development is consequently understood in terms of the removal of unfreedoms which otherwise constrain people's abilities to lead the lives they reasonably wish. In this sense, Sen articulates a classically liberalist philosophy. The object of inquiry is the question of how societal norms, customs, institutions and behaviour act to create the preconditions for a “good life” (Deneulin, 2002; Robeyn, 2005: 101). From these foundations, development is equated in terms of an expansion of people's substantive freedoms: “Viewing development in terms of expanding substantive freedoms directs attention to the ends that make development important, rather than merely to some of the means that, inter alia, play a prominent part of the process” (Sen 1999: 3).

Sen (1999: 17) continues:

[T]he view of freedom that is being taken here involves both the “processes” that allow freedom of actions and decisions, and the actual “opportunities” that people have, given their personal and social circumstances. Unfreedom can arise either through inadequate processes (such as the violation of voting privileges or other political or civil rights) or through inadequate opportunities that some people have for achieving what they minimally would like to achieve (including the absence of such elementary opportunities as the capability to escape premature mortality or preventable morbidity or involuntary starvation).

Ingrid Robeyns (2005: 96) has referred specifically to the role of social and cultural practices in achieving capability:

For some of these capabilities, the main input will be financial resources and economic production, but for others it can also be political practices and institutions, such as the effective guaranteeing and protection of freedom of thought, political participation, social or cultural practices, social structures, social institutions, public goods, social norms, traditions and habits. The capability approach thus covers all dimensions of human well-being.

The logic of this perspective hinges on the way that a person's functionings connect to her/his capabilities. In their most straightforward sense, functionings are “what individuals may value doing or being” (Schischka et al., 2008: 231). They are “distinct aspects of living conditions or different achievements in living a certain type of life” (Deneulin, 2006: 4). Capabilities are then the extent to which functionings can be met (Smith and Seward, 2009: 218; Corbridge, 2002: 188). A person's capabilities are established through their possession of various conversion factors, including their personal attributes (metabolism, health, intell...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The dynamics of under-nutrition in India
• 3 Holding out the begging bowl no more: India as food self-sufficient but food insecure
• 4 Food security through agriculture-based livelihood strategies
• 5 Food security through the non-agricultural economy
• 6 Food security through social safety net programs
• 7 India's brave new world of food security policy: e-governance and cash transfers
• 8 Conclusion
• References
• Index