Shri Jitendra Prasada
Vice-President, Indian National Congress

Shri Jitendra Prasada presented his keynote address in Hindi; below we provide a brief English version of it:

This effort to bring together different sections of political opinion to comprehend the problem of hunger and malnutrition in India, undertaken on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of Indian Independence, is indeed extremely important. By organizing this seminar the Observer Research Foundation and the Centre for Policy Studies have earned our gratitude. If we could hold similar deliberations, transcending all political divide, on other issues of national importance, then we would probably begin to find solutions for some of the more vexed national problems.

While I was coming to attend this seminar, I happened to meet a scholarly friend of mine; and he told me that the kind of elaborate discussion that we find in prithvi-sukta of Atharvaveda on the issues of production and distribution of food can hardly be found in any other ancient literature of the world. I have not had the opportunity to read the book of Shri Bajaj and Shri Srinivas in detail; but the effort to bring together all that has been said in the civilizational literature of India concerning the production and distribution of food in abundance is indeed praiseworthy. And, what Dr. Bajaj has said today about looking at the problem of food from the perspective of both production and sharing together is indeed important.

Experts estimate that India’s population shall stabilize by the middle of next century at around 1.4 billion. If that is true, then increasing food production is if fundamental importance. Even today China produces more than twice as much foodgrains as India on a cultivated area that is somewhat less than ours. Productivity of lands in India is much below the rest of the world. If we could merely achieve in other parts of the country the level of productivity that we have achieved in Punjab, then we would emerge as the leading agricultural nation of the world.

We need to provide while of the country, especially the eastern parts of the country, with the technology, irrigation, credit and inputs that we have so far made available only in limited areas. Without such spread of productivity, the self-sufficiency in food that we have been talking about shall only remain an illusion. As has been pointed out this morning, we are self-sufficient only to the extent that we can keep our people from dying of starvation; this cannot be a desirable state of affairs.

We have not been able to make any major agricultural effort since the green revolution of the late sixties. During the last few years total production of foodgrains has become stagnant. Meanwhile availability of pulses, which are the main source of protein in Indian diets, has come down drastically. Availability of coarse grains, which form a major part of the food -basket of the poor has been sharply declining. And, notwithstanding appreciable increase in the production of oilseeds, total availability per capita remains low and much below demand.

Our distribution system also seems to have failed. States in the South, like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, do have some viable distribution system, but in the North, I believe, not even ten percent of the population is covered by the public distribution system. The result is that people have to resort to agitation and even plunder in order to feed themselves. I recently heard that truckloads of food, vegetables and fruit passing through Bastar were being looted; then a preceptive administrator arranged for distribution of food in the area, and the looting stopped.

The problem of food therefore has to be looked at from the perspective of production, distribution and also of population. Only when we study the problem from all these three angles, and make plans accordingly, we shall be able to arrive at an appropriate solution.

Let me end by once again congratulating the organizers of this seminar. I hope that they shall also make the effort to involve leaders of different political parties in similar deliberations on other important issues facing the nation. 

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