we are a hungry country
Baawara introduced me to Malthusian Catostrophe, it basically states that once the population growth has outpaced the food production growth over a sufficient period of time the human's will be forced to return to survival techniques (hunting and gathering etc). The Malthusian essay also talked about the impact of this phenomena on the limits of economic growth.
These conversations encouraged me to do some research on how India is doing on this front, given the fact that our agri sector has not been doing too well. The land holdings are getting smaller, productivity is falling even in Punjab, which has comparatively large land holdings and seems more oriented to technology aided farming. The data that I got hold of food availability is shocking. Here are some facts
1. Per capita availability of food grains has drastically decreased from 495 grams
per capita per day (1989) to 422 grams per capita per day (2005).
2 Cereal intake of the economically poor (bottom 30% of the population) continues
to be disproportionately low compared to the cereal intake of the economically
better off (top 30% of the population).
3 The cereal intake of the economically poor has continued to decrease: In 1993
cereal intake was 12kg per month and by 2005 it had fallen to 11.3 kg.
4 Unemployment among agricultural labour households has sharply increased from 9.5%
in 1993-94 to 15.3% in 2004-05(Planning Commission 2006).
5 Between 1998 and 2006 there was virtually no change in the statistic that 47% per
cent of children (0-3 years old) were underweight.
6 More than 50% of women and 75% of children in India are anemic (no decline in
eight years).
7 A pregnant Indian woman gains only 5kg, whereas the world average gain is 10 kg,
This is a leading cause of babies being dangerously underweight, and high infant
and mother mortality rates.
Have not been able to dig more recent data, but am not sure how different it will be. More to come.
@Prasanth dude try to exprience hunger once and than u will get the answer to ur questions of So What?
These conversations encouraged me to do some research on how India is doing on this front, given the fact that our agri sector has not been doing too well. The land holdings are getting smaller, productivity is falling even in Punjab, which has comparatively large land holdings and seems more oriented to technology aided farming. The data that I got hold of food availability is shocking. Here are some facts
1. Per capita availability of food grains has drastically decreased from 495 grams
per capita per day (1989) to 422 grams per capita per day (2005).
2 Cereal intake of the economically poor (bottom 30% of the population) continues
to be disproportionately low compared to the cereal intake of the economically
better off (top 30% of the population).
3 The cereal intake of the economically poor has continued to decrease: In 1993
cereal intake was 12kg per month and by 2005 it had fallen to 11.3 kg.
4 Unemployment among agricultural labour households has sharply increased from 9.5%
in 1993-94 to 15.3% in 2004-05(Planning Commission 2006).
5 Between 1998 and 2006 there was virtually no change in the statistic that 47% per
cent of children (0-3 years old) were underweight.
6 More than 50% of women and 75% of children in India are anemic (no decline in
eight years).
7 A pregnant Indian woman gains only 5kg, whereas the world average gain is 10 kg,
This is a leading cause of babies being dangerously underweight, and high infant
and mother mortality rates.
Have not been able to dig more recent data, but am not sure how different it will be. More to come.
@Prasanth dude try to exprience hunger once and than u will get the answer to ur questions of So What?
posted by Kholu at 10:49 AM
7 Comments:
So?
I thought there would be something after the long hiatus. Par yeah kya hai like a test message?
hahaha G there is more to come on this. Had a long discussion with Alam on the plight of poor in India, was doing some research on that, will post some data about it soon.
Aren't these numbers sad....
so much for becoming an economic powerhouse of the world
This comment has been removed by the author.
well one does not lead to the other -- these are not a fall out of economic development or liberalization, they are more a result of lop sided approach to policy making. Having said that these are really sad numbers we somehow keep falling behind on the Millennium Development Goals set by UN. Shamefully on some parameters we are even behind countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam just to name a few. More to come on this.
There is an interesting part to the hunger and malnutrition story in India. India is amongst top 3 producers for major grains and cereals along with dairy products.
The story is more about inefficient supply chain in the entire agri sector where it comes to govt procurement and distribution.
Hindustan Times is carrying out a series of stories through "The Hunger Project" which has more info on this.
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