Kitabı oku: «Food Security and International Relations»

ibidem-Press, Stuttgart

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1—INTRODUCTION. Food, Human Security and International Relations: Relations of Humanity?

CHAPTER 2 Contours of Food Security Challenges in Neo-liberal India

CHAPTER 3 Legal Dimension of the Human Right to Adequate Food and Public Policies

CHAPTER 4 Brazil and the Diplomacy to Fight Against Hunger and Poverty

CHAPTER 5 Practicing the Principles of South-South Cooperation: The Methodology of the Centre of Excellence Against Hunger

CHAPTER 6 Maize and the World Market: a History of Racism, Commodification, and Resistance

CHAPTER 7 International Food Aid and Genetically Modified Organisms: the Case of the United States

CHAPTER 8 From Food Insecurity to Food Dependence: Pattern of Land Accumulation and Land Grabbing in Argentina

CHAPTER 9 China’s Food Security and Land Grabbing. The Case of Argentina.

CHAPTER 1—INTRODUCTION.
Food, Human Security and International Relations: Relations of Humanity?

Thiago Lima (UFPB); Agostina Costantino (IIESS, UNS-CONICET); Laís Forti Thomaz (UFG); Raquel Maria de Almeida Rocha (USP)

1 Introduction

The present Era on Earth has been named the Anthropocene. This era began in the late eighteenth century, when the industrial revolution, advances in agriculture and medicinal innovations allowed humanity to act and live on a scale that was entirely different from earlier eras. Producing and Reproducing1. The number of human beings has grown dramatically over the last two centuries; plotted on a Cartesian graph, it has been a veritable rocket launch. For this dizzying explosion of the species to occur, the amount of food produced also had to increase. We now know that there is an excess—rather than a lack—of food for humanity. The issue is how to distribute this food and which criteria should be used (ZIEGLER, 2013).

The Anthropocene means—nothing more, nothing less—that humanity is now able to affect the geophysical functioning of planet Earth. The magnitude of this is truly remarkable. Humanity’s activities became so powerful that they unwittingly changed the climate of the globe. For those of us alive now, we are in a somewhat different situation, as we understand what is happening. It is distressing to realize that we may be forced to live with the consequences of our ancestors’ decisions. It is reassuring, however, to think that something can be done to mitigate the consequences for the people still to come.

The concept of the Anthropocene did not arrive with a sense of celebration. It is not an award recognizing the progress of humanity. Rather, it is a warning that humanity may have produced and reproduced to such an extent that it unleashed factors capable of leading, if not to the end of the world, then at least to extremely serious ecological cataclysms that are likely to intensify conflicts around the world.

Conflict. A word that reminds us that the idea of “one Humanity” is—still?—illusory. Most of the social sciences were developed to address a fact inherent to the human being: people are divided into groups that conflict with one another. However, the groups themselves are a sign that conflict is not a solitary dynamic: it is possible to cooperate and to offer solidarity. But on what scale? Among nations? With our fellow citizens?

To think about the possibilities of cooperation and solidarity for the elimination of hunger, it is essential to refer to the report on “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World,” organized annually by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN). The FAO (2018) indicates that over the last three years, the absolute number of undernourished people has increased to 821 million, or approximately 11% of the world’s population. After several years of decline, the number is similar to that in 2010. However, if we go back to 2005, there were 945 million people facing chronic food shortages. The absolute number of undernourished people has thus been falling, but very slowly given the urgency of the problem, and unfortunately, this decline is not irreversible.

The global distribution of hunger is quite heterogeneous. The problem was virtually eliminated in North America and Europe, where it is reported that less than 2.5% of the population was experiencing hunger in 2017. In other regions, the scenario was as follows: Africa, 20.4%; Asia, 11.4%; Latin America and the Caribbean, 6.1%; and Oceania, 7%. Although the percentage of people in the world who are experiencing hunger has steadily declined in recent decades, we cannot overlook the fact that this rate has increased in recent years in all subregions of Africa, as well as parts of Asia, Oceania and South America. The intensification of social inequality in the United States may exacerbate the situation there. This reminds us once again that progress—which is being made extremely slowly—is not irreversible.

The leading causes of hunger today are adverse weather events, the prevalence of armed conflict and economic crises (FAO, 2018). Although there are some exceptions in the case of the first cause, the latter two are undoubtedly the result of human action. However, if we adopt the perspective of Amartya Sen (2008), even though not all hunger has human causes, it is possible to argue that since the mid-twentieth century, all hunger has been allowed by humans. In other words, if there is food and the technical means to deliver it to the hungry, there are only undernourished people because there is no policy for providing those people with food.

Politics and economics converge on this point: while economic growth is important, it does not guarantee any reduction in hunger, at least not on the possible scale. The intensifying concentration of wealth around the world, given the continued persistence of millions of hungry families, demonstrates that economic interests are not guided by humanity. In Brazil, 71 million people held 50% of the national income in 2015, while 1.4 million accounted for 28% of the country’s wealth. The government failed to regulate that distribution and protect the country from the threat of returning to the Hunger Map in 2018. The number of people in extreme poverty in Brazil jumped from approximately 5.1 million in 2014 to approximately 10 million in 2016, and there is no reason to expect any improvement (RBA, 2018; G1, 2018). For our neighbor, Argentina, undernourishment and food exports have grown alongside each other in recent years, as analyzed by Costantino in Chapter 6.

The problem of food and nourishment no longer refers only to the lack of food. Undernourishment has become an increasingly notable problem on an international level. Strongly present in a number of developed countries, particularly in the US, a diet that leads to people becoming obese is spreading around the globe. Josué de Castro noted halfway through the last century that a large percentage of the poor suffered from hidden hunger, i.e., they were able to fill their stomachs, but they still lacked nutrients. The problem is now taking on another dimension: stomachs are becoming too full, leading to obesity and a host of nutritional disorders. There are currently 38.3 million overweight children in the world: 46% of them are in Asia, and 25% are in Africa. While childhood obesity has remained stable since 2012, adult obesity has increased since 1975. Today, 672 million people worldwide are obese (FAO, 2018). What many people still overlook is that our diets are not simply related to flavor and tradition. They are also the result of international dynamics driven by geopolitical factors, the trajectory of capitalism or other forces.

In the field of international relations, the issue of hunger still lacks prominence. Fortunately, the human security approach has helped bring it to the forefront, reverberating into discussions about rights, public policy and economic arrangements. The human security approach helps make it possible to understand the concept of food security. We will now take a critical look at this topic and the need for a multidimensional analysis of agrifood, as presented in the chapters of this collection.

2 Human Security: people first

The human security approach has a controversial origin. The international relations literature generally locates it within the debate on the expansion of international security studies, with an emphasis on the post-Cold War scenario. It originates, however, in debates among developmental economists. They thought about the humanization of the economy through the concerns raised by new threats to individuals (ROCHA, 2017). Some authors claim that human security was almost exclusively a contribution of the UN, while others argue that the organization was the birthplace of only some of the key insights (OWEN, 2008; MACFARLANE, KHONG, 2006).

In any case, the topic of human security emerges as both an instrument for advocacy and an intellectual device calling for the unification of protection, welfare and rights concerns inherent to individuals. At its core is the guarantee of “social security” (TADJBAKHSH, 2005). There is an attempt to identify threats and ways to mitigate them, focusing on the protection of people and communities, rather than the security of states, thus emphasizing the importance of human rights (KALDOR, 2007). People should be protected regardless of whether threats come from anthropogenic activities or natural events, whether they are within or outside the state, or whether they are direct or structural (THAKUR, 2004). For Thakur (2004), although this approach results in the loss of a certain analytical rigor, it is more important to be inclusive when defining threats (THAKUR, 2004)2.

At the same time, poverty, natural disasters and epidemics are now being discussed as threats to international security itself, which ends up broadly influencing the debate on development and security, particularly as they are vocalized through the UN (ROCHA, 2017). In Brazil, for example, the threat of hunger is considered through the internalization of the human right to adequate food (HRAF) (LOPES, FEITOSA, Ch. 2).

Human security as a policy approach is defined for the first time in the 1994 Human Development Report (HDR) by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) (UNDP, 1994). The term, however, had previously been used in the 1992 report, An Agenda for Peace, as well as being cited five times in the 1993 HDR, emphasizing the need for a “people-centered development” (UNDP, 1993)3. However, the 1994 HDR was responsible for making the idea more widespread. It sought to influence the debate, as well as international cooperation, on development and security actions among member states and other UN institutions. The report states that:

Human security can be said to have two main aspects. It means, first, safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression. And second, it means protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily life—whether in homes, in jobs or in communities. Such threats can exist at all levels of national income and development. (UNDP, 1994, p. 23)

The Report also states that there should be two components for understanding human security: (i) freedom from fear—freedom from threats that impede access to people’s rights, security and guarantees to life; it is thus essential to be free from the fear of physical violence and fear more broadly; and (ii) freedom from want—individuals free from poverty, for example, through stable access to healthcare and the economy.

All the reports since 1990 have been based on the premise that a nation’s wealth is its people and that it is necessary to broaden the possibilities for their personal fulfillment, rather than solely in terms of the nation’s productivity. This premise is influenced by the conception of broadening the substantive freedoms of individuals (Sen, 2008). In other words, while an increase in income or GDP enables people to expand their freedoms as citizens, having access to healthcare, education or civil and political rights and freedom of expression, for example, are other determinants of freedoms that are equally important to human development. This means that human security can be underpinned by human development.

The HDR also establishes seven pillars for human security: (i) economic security: sufficient remuneration from labor activity or social welfare to guarantee the survival of the individual and their family; (ii) food security: guarantee of both economic and physical access to a basic diet that supplies the minimum daily intake of nutrients required by the individual; (iii) health security: guarantee to an environment free of chronic diseases and the availability of medical care; (iv) environmental security: absence of threats of environmental origin, as well as guarantees to drinking water, clean air and clean rivers, among others; (v) personal security: absence of bodily threats from physical violence, which may be political, ethnic, street, domestic, gender, child abuse, suicide or war, among others; (vi) community security: security guaranteed to people who are part of an ethnic group, for example; and (vii) political security: guarantee to fundamental human rights, such as freedom of political expression (UNDP, 1994). The Report demonstrates that human security should be a universal concern. Its components are interdependent, and the easiest way to guarantee it is through prevention.

The 1995 World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen, however, did not adopt human security. States were skeptical, believing that the idea would lead to violations of state sovereignty. The most concrete step towards human security only occurs in 1997, with the signing of the Ottawa Convention, followed by the Rome Statute in 19984. The Convention prohibits the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of anti-personnel landmines and requires their destruction (ACA, 2018), while the Statute creates the International Criminal Court (ICC), the first international court that judges individuals rather than states, i.e., the international community’s first attempt to construct a punishment mechanism for individuals who commit crimes against humanity, in cases where the national court system is reluctant or unable to prosecute (ROCHA, 2011).

In 2000, at the initiative of Japan, the United Nations Human Security Fund (UNHSF) was created, which

(..) [finances] projects related to peacebuilding, post-conflict restoration, and approaches to chronic poverty, disaster risk reduction, human trafficking and food security, seeking to translate them into operational activities that offer sustainable benefits to people and communities whose survival, dignity and livelihood are threatened as well as empower individuals to increase their resilience (ROCHA, 2017, p. 108).

Empowerment was included in the HDR as early as 1993, in the discussion on human development. This demonstrates that individual autonomy is essential to the state and the markets, not only for accessing civil and social rights but also because development is intended to help and support people, enabling them to have control over their own lives, whether it is within the context of physical or food security, for example.

The UNHSF became operational with the approval of Resolution 66/290 by the UN General Assembly, which recognizes that human security has three pillars: development, human rights and peace and security. This is the most emblematic resolution in terms of human security. In addition to asking member states to use the approach, it defines human security in practical terms, to be applied across the UN system. It also alters the functioning of the UN system, as it was very difficult for the agencies to find ways to understand how human security should be incorporated into everyday life.

3 Food: threat, right and food sovereignty

As we have seen, food security is part of the human security approach. However, the FAO, which discusses the evolution of food security as an operational concept in public policy, indicates that over two hundred definitions have emerged since the 1970s. Since 2001, the official definition has been:

Food security [is] a situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life (FAO, 2003).

Burke and Lobell (2010, p.14) highlight the three components of the concept, in a conventional view: (1) food availability; (2) food accessibility; and (3) food utilization. Availability refers to the physical presence of food; accessibility refers to having the means to acquire food through production or purchase; and utilization refers to the food having an adequate nutritional content and to the body’s ability to use it effectively.

However, other interpretations are more comprehensive. Treating food security as a right, Leão and Maluf (2012, p.7) characterize the right to food as a form of regular and permanent access to adequate food for all people, giving attention to the conditions under which it is produced and marketed. The authors explain that this right must be achieved without compromising other rights, such as housing, healthcare, education, income, environment, work, transportation, employment, leisure, freedom and land access and possession.

The divergence noted here is not trivial. It signals a clash of ideas that ultimately reverberates into domestic and international public policies. For example, in the streamlined view of Burke and Lobel (2010), there is no emphasis on the local specificities of food production and trade, which is present in Leão and Maluf (2012). We will not include a conceptual discussion in this introduction, as it can be found in the chapters. For example, in the chapter by Costantino, it is clear that the former view can coexist with increased undernourishment in Argentina, which would be unthinkable for the latter.

From the perspective of human security, food security is a foundation for peace, political stability and sustainability, as structural peace can only be achieved if there is food security. Food insecurity is thus a threat to people and the international system. It is even possible to state that we are not secure if we do not have guarantees to buy food nor the freedom to grow and store it.

It is also essential to understand that conflict damages crop cultivation, animal husbandry and harvesting. It also damages rural resources and disrupts food transportation and distribution systems. The impact that conflicts have on food security can last for long periods of time after the violence has ended; although destruction happens quickly, reconstruction requires time, effort and material, and human and financial resources.

McMichael (2004, p. 4) offers a distinction between the concepts of food security and food sovereignty. He argues that the concept of food security is better associated with the relationship between the nation-state and the international system. In turn, the concept of food sovereignty involves nonstate actors, which would be more closely tied to the political and economic rights of agricultural producers as a precondition for achieving food security. In a way, what McMichael (2004) argues is that each of these concepts represents a type of agricultural production, i.e., food security depends on the agribusiness model, and food sovereignty is based on agroecological relations.

For McMichael (2004), food sovereignty thus emerges as an alternative principle to productivist and quantitative measures of food security, which would be identified with monetary transactions in the capitalist system. Food sovereignty would be premised on an agriculture oriented towards the farmer, small producer and family farm, which for the author would be key to the relationships between environmental and social security and food security. It is important to understand the argument that food sovereignty should be a premise of food security, rather than its antithesis, as McMichael (2004) emphasizes.

To guarantee the food independence and sovereignty of all people, according to La Via Campesina (2001), food must be produced through diversified systems. The organization argues that people have the right to define their own agricultural and food policies, as well as protect and regulate agricultural production and domestic trade in order to achieve sustainability goals, and determine the extent to which they want to be self-sufficient and restrict product dumping on their markets. This requires trade policies and practices that serve people’s rights to safe, healthy and ecologically sustainable production. The protectionist policies adopted primarily by developed countries make it difficult to act on a level playing field in commodities markets. However, there may be a need for protection precisely from the destructive potential of the international commodities market. The idea of food sovereignty therefore implies that communities have the autonomy to decide how to distribute and sell their food.

High commodities prices in 2007/2008 were emblematic of food insecurity caused by jolts in the international market. Ziegler (apud CHADE, 2009, p. 11), a former UN rapporteur on the right to food, emphasized that “in 2008, hunger killed more people than all the wars combined that year.” Chade (2009) argues that the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the UN itself stopped giving aid to small farmers in poor countries for approximately twenty years, which exacerbated problems when commodities prices increased. In truth, rather than abandonment, it may be possible to talk about a project making food sovereignty more vulnerable.

The idea of food sovereignty advocates for people’s right to healthy and culturally appropriate food, produced ecologically and sustainably, while valuing the role of women. It implies that a community is able to define its own nutrition and agrifood systems, i.e., the effective right to choose what we should eat, where the food comes from and how it should be grown. However, it is important to avoid adopting a romantic approach to food sovereignty, which could hinder an open and creative reflection on the systemic challenges of eliminating hunger worldwide.

4 Agrifood relations: from a local to global capitalist system

Taking food as the central axis of human relations, the chapters in this collection raise and refocus the question of how to feed people in a world divided into nations, states and social classes. Indeed, one dimension common to all the texts is the international theme. This does not mean, however, that the analysis is restricted to the level of state relations. In contrast, the authors in this collection acknowledge that to address the topic of food, it is essential to remember that the biological constitution of the human being tethers us to the need to harvest from nature and eat in order to produce and reproduce. Every single day. How this occurs, however, is socially constructed, from relationships between neighbors to interactions among nations. Each chapter in this collection offers its own vision of how socially constructed aspects affect food and nourishment, never letting us forget that everything could be different. By identifying actors and examining relations, institutions and structures, we come to understand that agrifood relations are always in motion. Few would doubt that there is creative potential for devising a solution to food and nutrition insecurity. The challenge, however, is developing a solution that is politically achievable from the local to the global levels, passing through the international level.

The objective of this book is therefore to deepen the connection between international relations and food. While the texts share a common axis, the angle changes according to the chapters, giving the reader the opportunity to explore the subject through political economy, political science, law and international relations. The contents of the book’s chapters are divided into three groups: i) the humanitarian and ethical importance of solving the problem of hunger; ii) the strategic relevance for states of achieving food security, including via food sovereignty; and iii) the nature of the food security problem in a world where production and distribution are guided by the rationalism of capitalism.

In this sense, the chapter of Praveen Jha, Santosh Verma, Manish Kumar is a great opportunity to start with the analytical chapters of the book, since it covers these dimensions. The authors relate the beginning and deepening of neoliberalism in India with the serious food problems that seem to be getting worse and worse in this country. In fact, they mention that the characteristics that development has had since the neoliberal stage in India have strongly affected the supply of adequate food for the population. Moreover, all this took place while the country lived a stage of strong GDP growth. The drivers the authors mention to explain this are: the orientation of production to exports, the focalization of food distribution policies, the decline in income of the rural and urban population, the expulsion of peasants from the land, the cutback of public expenditures in the agricultural sector.

Dialoguing with the issues mentioned earlier, Ana Carolina Oliveira and Maria Luiza Feitosa emphasize the importance of considering food to be a human right as well as the importance of public policies for achieving this right. The authors highlight the role that states should play in guaranteeing the right to food, which does not imply only secure access to food according to cultural guidelines but also individual emancipation and autonomy in the consumption and production of food. The authors thus contribute to the discussion of human security, as they consider food sovereignty to be a matter that goes beyond food security, rather than the reverse.

Note that the solution poses a challenge to the idea of “one Humanity”: dividing in an attempt to achieve solidarity? That is, does sovereignty need to be valued as an element that makes communities independent, in order for those communities to better feed themselves in the face of transnational economic forces? Whatever the answer, it seems foolish to disregard national constitutions as a privileged instrument for guiding the adequate nourishment of the population. The trend in this regard is encouraging: several countries have incorporated the HRAF into their constitutions.

One example of the potential international interference in national agrifood systems is offered by Thiago Lima, Erbenia Lourenço and Henrique Menezes. They discuss the reasons behind international food aid from the US to African and Latin American countries containing genetically modified organisms. Although there are humanitarian motivations for the donations, there are also clear economic interests and a disrespect for the recipients’ preferences. Certain international forums and dispute settlement environments may thus play a key role in shifting dysfunctional agrifood systems towards food sovereignty.

Indeed, it is not surprising to find that trade agreements and international organizations can reinforce the hierarchical relationship among countries in the North-South direction, keeping the latter vulnerable and dependent. However, international agreements and organizations can also be mobilized to spread solidarity among countries.

South-South cooperation to promote food and nutrition security is one example. In this context, the UN World Food Program’s Centre of Excellence against Hunger, established in Brazil, excels at encouraging international cooperation in school food and nutrition. Clarissa Dri and Andressa Silva examine the Centre’s actions through the principles of South-South cooperation, in terms of the autonomy of the countries involved and of strategic relations beyond the economic sphere. It is one example of how food security is more political than economic, as it does not depend as heavily on a country’s ability to produce food but rather on deciding which food to produce and how to distribute it. South-South cooperation can therefore be a strategy for solidarity, which reinforces sovereignty.

In this vein, Felipe Albuquerque explains how policies to fight against hunger and poverty implemented in Brazil in the 2000s (at least until 2016) created a repertoire of success that enabled Brazilian diplomacy to make the country a relevant power for the region and for other developing countries. Throughout the text, Albuquerque shows how changes in the general direction of the economy (from President Lula to President Roussef and then to President Temer) impacted the country’s external role as an international engine for policies to fight against hunger. This role is called into question by the movement that ousted President Dilma Roussef and brought her vice president, Michel Temer, to power.

A crucial food for Latin America is maize, and the history of its uses has much to do with the relations that Latin American countries have with developed countries. In their chapter, Andrea Santos Baca and Julia Cristina de Sousa e Berruezo show the role of maize in the world food market and the constructed image of it as a second class food, in a colonial attempt to sweep away the customs of the local people of Latin America and impose a mode of feeding similar to the European one, at the same time as spreading European uses of it worldwide. Furthermore, as the authors show, this crop has become one of the first to go through a process of hybridization and genetic modification, which responds to the “negative” image of food for animals (and not humans) that the Europeans gave to maize, as opposed to the images of wheat or rice as typically human foods. In other words, the apparent “advantage” of maize as a genetically modified food hides the value that the colonizing culture placed on it.

The relationship between economics, politics and food security is examined more deeply in the chapter by Agostina Costantino. This chapter brings us closer to the end of the book through a dialogue with the opening chapter on food security in India. The author reveals the irrelevance of Argentina’s image as the “world’s breadbasket,” given the presence of thousands of undernourished or malnourished people in the country. Costantino shows how structural reforms implemented since the late 1970s—and more intensely since the 1990s—contributed to pushing aside the objective of food security, directing the entire economic structure towards the production of a (small) number of foods for export. In terms of international relations, this chapter offers a discussion of land grabbing by investors and foreign countries, which exacerbates food security and even calls the country’s food sovereignty into question.

Closely related to the previous one, the chapter of Sol Mora deals with the general problem developed by Agostina Costantino, but in two specific case studies of Chinese investments in Argentina: an agri-food project and the building of an irrigation aqueduct. In both cases, it is about thousands of hectares that the Asian country intended to control in Argentina. Mora’s hypothesis is challenging because most studies on land grabbing of national cases tend to focus separately either on the role of nation states, or on the social conflicts that have arisen, or on the interests of companies when setting up in other countries. This work not only addresses the problem comprehensively by including these three actors through the concept of governance, but also includes a protagonist not always considered in these studies: sub-national states, which are ultimately the ones that shape the relations that national governments end up having with other countries. The examples of Sol Mora show the effects that the current policy of relations with China can have on food security and the environment in the Southern Cone.

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The biological constitution of the human being seems to be a perpetual prison or an eternal reminder that we are not only fragile but also intimately connected to nature. Developing bonds of solidarity not only among human beings but also with nature itself is a fundamental question. Along these lines, it is essential to understand the challenges and opportunities found in the context of international relations, in order to shape a political force capable of guaranteeing the HRAF for all people. We cannot accept, two decades into the twenty-first century, that “one in three women of reproductive age globally is still affected by anemia.” Such data reveal the lack of care for our today and tomorrow, as anemia has “significant health and development consequences for both women and their children” (FAO, 2018, p.16). It is necessary to build agrifood systems that solve these types of problems. The further we move in this direction, the closer we come to glimpsing “one Humanity,” not in the distressing sense of the Anthropocene but in the urgent sense of social justice.

The International Agri-Food Studies Network (Rede de Estudos Agroalimentares Internacionais—Redagri) and its collaborators wish everyone happy reading and lively debates!

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1 This reflection is based on DANOWSKI, D. and CASTRO, E. V. Há mundo por vir? Ensaio sobre os medos e os fins. Florianópolis, Instituto Socioambiental, 2014.

2 A narrower approach focuses on the human consequences of armed conflict and the dangers they present to individuals—primarily civilians—by repressive governments and situations of state failure. This approach has a greater influence on the security agenda and focuses on threats to physical integrity rather than incorporating issues related to human development and empowerment, as in the earlier approach. Modern conflicts reflect a high level of civil wars and state collapse, resulting in a high rate of civilian victimization and displacement, particularly for women and children (EVANS, 2004; KRAUSE, 2004; MACFARLANE & KHONG, 2006)

3 The HDR tracks and monitors the progress of humanity and ranks countries with its Human Development Index (HDI). The UNDP also produces Regional Reports, which propose actions that would enable each country to achieve human development (UNDP, 2015; UL HAQ, 1995).

4 Both instruments of international law were made possible by the Canadian-led coalition and the advocacy efforts of the Human Security Network (HRH), comprising Austria, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Greece, Ireland, Jordan, Mali, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Slovenia and Thailand, with South Africa as an observer. Japan was invited but declined to participate due to the emphasis on humanitarian intervention and the constitutional restriction on using force without authorization from the UN Security Council.

CHAPTER 2
Contours of Food Security Challenges in Neo-liberal India

Praveen Jha1, Santosh Verma2, Manish Kumar3

Introduction:

The fact that since the early 1960s, global agricultural production has approximately tripled is well known. But in spite of such an increase in output, food security has remained a serious challenge in many countries across the world, partly due to unevenness in agricultural growth itself, but also on account of other important policy measures. Thus as per the current estimate, close to almost 800 million persons across the globe are reported to be suffering from chronic hunger, mostly in global South, along with many more being malnourished, and close to two billion suffering from micronutrient deficiencies. In short, trajectories of agricultural growth and policy regimes to address the food security have been inadequate and seriously deficient across many countries, particularly, in the so-called developing world.

As is often acknowledged, the four proximate pillars of food security are: availability, access, utilisation and stability, which depend fundamentally on overall macroeconomic policy regimes. Further, it is widely recognised that food availability at the macro-level cannot be equated with the food security at the household/individual level, and desirable outcomes can hardly be achieved by relying entirely on market processes. There is huge evidence from across the world, including from the so-called developed countries, that a variety of critical public interventions are important in ensuring food and nutrition security (Dreze and Sen, 1989; Jha and Acharya, 2016). Given such a backdrop, the ascendancy of neo-liberalism since the 1970s, which in large parts of the world has resulted in significant compression of policy spaces for public intervention, several challenges have come to confront the objectives of adequate and assured food security.

Turning to India, as is well acknowledged, even the elementary markers related to food security paint a grim picture. For instance, as per the latest Global Hunger Index (GHI) Report (2019), out of 117 countries, which were surveyed, India has an alarmingly low rank of 102, much below some of its relatively poorer (in terms of per capita income) neighbours in South Asia, such as Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan. As it happens, this is in spite of reasonably robust GDP growth rates for almost four decades, in fact, second only to China which accounts for the fastest average GDP growth rates since the early 1980s, and has almost managed to banish hunger. This clearly tells us that relying simply on GDP cannot be a guarantee for ensuring even freedom from hunger, not to speak of food security. As we know from the huge and burgeoning literature on the subject, there are multiple correlates, economic-social-political, etc., of a robust and secure food system. Changes during the era of neoliberalism have created several adverse processes and mechanisms that have contributed to ongoing stress on the food front in a large number of countries, including India.

This paper seeks to investigate, in a political economy framework, some of the major causes underlying the deeply worrying food scenario in India. In particular, we examine important elements of the global and national economic policy architecture, which have been critical in shaping the overall context of the food system in the country. Growing internationalisation of food regime, e.g., through WTO architecture, several multilateral/regional/bilateral treaties and conventions, and increase in power of multinational corporations to shape such a regime to their advantage, are among the most obvious ‘external’ factors that we need to take note of. Further, important constraints on national/domestic macro-economic policy space and autonomy, which again have important organic linkages with neo-liberalism and the above noted ‘external’ factors, need to be underscored for an adequate understanding of the current challenges on the food front. These include, inter-alia, compression of public expenditure in general and provisioning for food, (for instance through public distribution systems), in particular, move towards cash transfers, squeeze of support for agriculture and rural development through multiple channels such as adequate support prices, subsidies etc., and worsening of livelihood and employment prospects due to the nature and structure of the growth trajectory itself.

The paper engages with the dialectics underlying the above noted international and domestic correlates, which impinge on the issues relating to the food system in contemporary India. Given that the theme has a vast canvas and a range of complex connected themes that are relevant for any such discussion, we have had to be selective in focusing on only a few critical issues. The paper draws primarily on the available secondary information to provide a sketch of the current challenges and some policy reflections.

Food Security Situation in India:

The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimates reveal that in 2014, the number of severely food insecure people in the world was 585 million, which increased to 704.3 million in 2018. If moderately food insecure people are also added to the number, it increased to 1696.3 million in 2014, and to 2013.8 million globally in 2018. Across most regions, the numbers for both severe and moderately food insecure have increased between 2014 and 2018. The South Asia also has witnessed a rise in numbers of severely and moderately food insecure people (Table 1) (FAO, 2019).

Table 1: Number of Severely and Moderately Food Insecure People in Different Regions of the World

Regions	Number of Severely Food Insecure People (Millions)			Number of Moderately and Severely Insecure People (Millions)
	2014	2016	2018	2014	2016	2018
World	585	600.4	704.3	1696.3	1801.9	2013.8
Africa	210.7	268.2	277	554.1	644.1	676.1
Asia	305.9	264.8	353.6	875.6	871.1	1038.5
Southern Asia	247.1	195.8	271.7	565.7	559.6	649.1
Latin America	45.1	46.5	54.7	141.2	170	187.8
Northern America and Europe	16.1	13.4	10.6	105.2	95.8	88.7

Source: (FAO, 2019)

Across continents, the largest number of food-insecure people live in Asia, which is partly because of its high share in total global population. Further, as it happens, India, which accounts for 1.38 billion out of 7.46 billion of the global population, has the highest incidence of absolute hunger, and the situation has become more worrisome in the recent years. As a marker of food insecurity, Global Hunger Index, which is an initiative of International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Concern Worldwide and Welthungerlife, is a good indicator. This index uses three components, namely, undernourishment, child underweight and child mortality; it takes into account share of the undernourished population, the share of children under the age of five who have low weight against their height, share of children under the age of five who are stunted and mortality rate of children under the age of five. The Global Hunger Index (GHI) score4 of India was 23.7 with the 67th position out of 81 countries in the list in 2011; this score went down to 29 and the country was ranked 80th out of 104 countries in 2015. As per the most recent estimate, in 2019, India’s score further declined to 30.3 and it was ranked as 102 out of 117 countries. In other words, the GHI scores and ranking for India in recent years clearly show an extremely worrisome state of under-nutrition, child wasting and stunting and unacceptably high mortality rates of children due to acute hunger.

As is obvious, food grains production is the major pre-requisite for the first pillar of food security, i.e. availability. As it happens, in the last thirty years of neoliberal policies, production of food grains output in India has increased at a slow pace, barely keeping ahead of the population growth; however, given the major policy reconfigurations during the period since the early 1990s, there has been a significant compression in food availability, going well beyond what may be explained by per capita production figures.

Figure 1 provides the annual food grain production in India and a comparison of per capita production and availability of food grains. In the period between 1990–91 and 2018–19, food grain production in India increased from 176 million tonnes to 285 million tonnes, with compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 1.7 per cent. In the same period, per capita food grain production increased from 208 kg per year to 214 kg per year with a CAGR of 0.1 per cent. However, in the referred period, the per capita availability declined from 186 kg per year to 180 kg per year with CAGR of −0.1 per cent.

Figure 1: Food Grain Production (Million Tonnes), Per Capita Production and Availability of Food Grains (Kg/person/year) in India, 1990–91 to 2018–19

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Source: Agricultural Statistics at a Glance—2019, Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India.

As regards, per capita availability of food grains, and in particular the growing gap between per capita production and availability, the factors responsible have very strong connects with the changes in the overall macroeconomic policy regime. One of the most important reasons is that of income deflation for a very large segment of the population, and consequently their ability to access food. Other important correlates that we need to take into account are: changes in agricultural subsidy and trade regimes, reconfiguration of the public distribution system, policies of stockholding, among others.

Table 2 presents the per capita availability and consumption of three major items and their related processed products, namely, rice, wheat and pulses. Between 1993–94 and 2011–12, the gap between availability and consumption of these items in India has widened considerably. This is based on different rounds of surveys done by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO)5.

Table 2: Per Capita Availability and Consumption of Rice, Wheat and Pulses (Kg/year/person)

Year	Rice			Wheat			All pulses
	Per Capita Availability	Per Capita Consumption		Per Capita Availability	Per Capita Consumption		Per Capita Availability	Per Capita Consumption
		Rural	Urban		Rural	Urban		Rural	Urban
1993–94	75.7	82.6	62.4	58.2	52.6	54.0	13.6	9.3	10.5
1999–00	74.3	80.2	62.1	58.4	54.1	54.1	11.6	10.2	12.2
2004–05	64.7	77.6	57.3	56.3	51.0	53.1	11.5	8.6	10.0
2009–10	66.4	74.7	56.6	61.4	53.0	52.8	12.9	7.9	9.6
2011–12	69.4	74.6	56.7	57.8	53.9	52.6	15.2	9.5	11.0

Source: Agricultural Statistics at a Glance—2019, Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India.

Table 2 presents the average picture of the country; however, it is well acknowledged that neoliberalism tends to exacerbate inequality everywhere and the India story is no different. From the different rounds of the above noted quinquennial rounds of the NSSO, we are in a position to map per capita consumption and food intake across different deciles of the population between early 1990s and 2011–12. As per the estimates available for this period, it is clear that for the bottom 9 deciles in rural and the 6 deciles in urban India, per capita consumption is less than the official norms of adequate calorie benchmark, which are 2400 and 2100 calories per day respectively (refer Table 3) (Ram 2017). This shows extreme levels of food insecurity in both rural and urban India. In the next sections, the paper offers an analysis of some of the major reasons for persistent and growing food insecurity in India; essentially these correlate well with ascendency and consolidation of neoliberal policies in the country.

Table 3: Estimated per Capita Calorie Intake per Day (in kcal)

Decile	Rural				Urban
	1993–94	2004–05	2009–10	2011–12	1993–94	2004–05	2009–10	2011–12
1	1465	1482	1545	1674	1453	1509	1558	1634
2	1731	1676	1712	1820	1703	1681	1700	1760
3	1850	1797	1819	1911	1800	1829	1760	1855
4	1975	1875	1882	1977	1900	1847	1846	1917
5	2057	1955	1980	2038	1997	1935	1912	1977
6	2165	2037	2022	2119	2080	2010	1977	2049
7	2278	2148	2110	2184	2189	2094	2074	2127
8	2411	2280	2181	2348	2287	2195	2164	2244
9	2588	2362	2323	2333	2462	2315	2290	2378
10	3035	2764	2610	2610	2844	2654	2527	2638
All	2156	2038	2018	2099	2072	2007	1981	2058

Source: (Ram 2017)

There are various studies that have analysed the trends and causes for decline in calorie-intake since the early 1990s (Deaton and Dreze, 2009; Patnaik, 2010a, 2010b; Nayyar and Nayyar, 2016: among others). Although there are some differences as regards the precise estimates of calorie deficient population across these studies, due to methodological differences, there is a broad similarity regarding the overall trends.

Neoliberalism and Its Impact on Food Security

It is well-acknowledged that the rise of neoliberalism has reconstituted the balance of power between the State and market forces, resulting in reduced commitments through a host of policy changes, towards citizens’ welfare at large. It is well known that, as a theory of political and economic practice, neoliberalism promotes strong private property rights, free markets and free trade in order to achieve human well-being through entrepreneurial freedom and skills (Harvey, 2007). In these theories, the State is confined to the responsibility of creating and preserving an institutional framework conducive to the free markets (ibid). India shifted in a significant manner towards liberalisation with the adoption of so-called new economic policy (NEP) in July 1991 (Patnaik and Chandrasekhar, 1995; Patnaik, 2007). In line with the policy prescriptions of the Brettonwoods Institutions (e.g. the World Bank and the IMF), India went ahead with policies of fiscal stabilisation and Structural Adjustment Programmes resulting in significant curtailment of its development and social sector expenditure and promoting a whole range of market friendly measures; these have had substantial impacts of well-being of the masses in general such as poverty, food security, employment etc. along with increases in inequalities across different axes such as rural-urban, social and occupational groups, among others. In the following sections, we focus on policies that impacted, directly and indirectly, on overall food situation in the country.

A. Export Orientation

The trade liberalisation, which is an integral part of the neo-liberal policies, has facilitated the export of agricultural products from developing countries to developed countries, despite falling per capita availability and consumption in the latter (Patnaik, 2016). As mentioned earlier, the export of food grains from India is among one of the significant factors contributing to the gap between production and availability, as is clearly evident from the table below.

Figure 2: Indian Export of Food Grains (Thousand Tonnes), 1990–91 to 2018–19

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Source: Agricultural Products Export Development Authority, Government of India

In the last three decades, the export of food grains from India has increased with a CAGR of 12.7 per cent. Rice has the largest share in the total agricultural export from India; the share of wheat was relatively higher in the period between 2000 and 2006. The share of maize in total food grain export was significant only between 2011 and 2015. The increasing export orientation of food grains has happened in a context where the export price received for the major crops were less than the economic cost which is indeed a very strange phenomenon; further, apart from reducing availability, it obviously contributed to a compression of the income of the substantial segments of farmers. Thus, in a sense, it was akin to a “dual loss” to for the country as a whole (Kumar, 2019).

It is also well known that globalisation has tended to increase price volatility for agricultural products, contributing to major shocks in the recent decades; for instance, in 2006–08 and 2010–11. The FAO reported that food price index rose between 7 per cent and 27 per cent for 2006 and 2007 and for 2008, it was 24 percent above the level of 2007 (FAO, 2009). These upward spirals of global food commodity prices were due to the massive increase in financial speculation in the food commodity on the commodities future markets (Ghosh et al., 2012), which was largely due to crisis in the traditional financial sector around the same years.

In India, there was a continuous pressure on food prices from 2006–2013; as it happens, it was also a period of growing trade openness and integration with the global market for agricultural commodities. The share of agricultural trade to agricultural GDP increased from 5.2 per cent to 19 per cent in 2013–14 (Bhattacharya and Sen Gupta, 2017). The integration of India’s agricultural market to global agricultural market led to a rising share of agricultural land being diverted to exportable crops having high-end prices. In 2007–08, when global prices were soaring to a very high level, the export of food items became lucrative than selling in the Indian domestic market. There was a significant increase in the share of exports in total Indian food production, i.e. from 6.2 per cent between 2003–04 and 2005–06 to more than 10 per cent in the period 2006–07 to 2008–09.

B. Open Market Sale of Public Food Stock

Driven by the logic of fiscal consolidation and expenditure compression, India’s reasonably well-functioning Universal Public Distribution System (PDS) was converted to a Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) in 1997; incidently it also resulted in exclusion of a large number of eligible households from getting cheaper food grains and making them vulnerable for food security (Swaminathan and Mishra, 2001; Swaminathan, 2008). As shown in table 2, an important reason explaining the difference between availability and consumption of food grains is rising food stock with the government, which was obviously connected with universal PDS to TPDS.

Figure 3: Stock of Food Grains in the Central Pool, January 1991–2020 (Million Tonnes)

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Source: Directorate of Economics and Statistics and Department of Food and Public Distribution, Government of India

Figure 3 provides the estimates of major food grains stocks in the central pool (i.e. with the government of India) between 1991 and 2020, As it is clear from the figure that the stock of food grains was rising in the central pool even before 1996, but after 1998 there was a sharp rise in the food grain stock. Between 2004 and 2008, under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)-I government, in which Left Parties of India had a significant say, the food stock declined. After 2008, the stock of food in the central pool further increased until 2013. In 2013, the Government of India under UPA-II enacted National Food Security Act (NFSA), which guarantees subsidised food to the three-fourth of the rural population and half of the urban population (GoI, 2013a). The NFSA played an important role in increasing the base and reach of food grain distribution under TPDS. However, the incumbent regime led by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) after 2014 made some changes in the architecture of NFSA as well as norms6 of provisioning; these had an adverse impact on PDS system, leading to a decline in the distribution of food grains and build-up of stocks again. June stocks7 for the last four years from 2017, were 55.5, 68.1, 74.3, and 83.5 million tonnes respectively. Such huge stocks are completely illogical and avoidable when experts agree that 20–30 million tonnes are adequate as buffer norms for any contingency. Except for adherence to the bizarre philosophy of neoliberalism, there is no reason why the government should persist with such levels of “excess supply” which end up depriving millions of poor, hungry from access to food.

Figure 4: Sale of Wheat and Rice under the Open Market Sale Scheme (Domestic/Export from Central Pool) (Thousand Tonnes)

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Source: Department of Food and Public Distribution and various years’ Economic Survey of India

Now we move to the policy of Open Market Sales Scheme (OMSS) which the Government of India had adopted for wheat in 1993 and for rice in 1994 (GoI, 2005); the relevant figures for sale under the scheme are presented in Figure 4. The scheme makes provision for sale of wheat and rice under the central pool, that is, out of food grains procured by the public agencies. The Food Corporation of India (FCI) sells food grains in bulk to private traders through tenders. The policy makers had rightly argued that keeping high stock in the central pool has a substantial economic cost, and hence it was prudent to offload part of it through open markets (domestic as well as export). Of course, the question arise: why not provision for higher levels of distribution through PDS to the needy population instead of opting for open market sales? Obvious answer lies in the logic of neoliberal framework.

As it happens, the OMSS resulted in the Wheat Crisis in 2006, when in April of that year (which is a month of wheat procurement), the stock of wheat in the central pool fell short of the buffer norm by 100 thousand tonnes (Aspects of Indian Economy, 2006); this forced the government to import wheat in that year. It was under United Progressive Alliance-I, which was a front led by the Congress and supported by the Left parties among others, that the OMSS was entirely stopped between 2004 and 2009; unfortunately, it again got a new lease of life subsequently. The trends for the OMSS during the last two decades are clearly evident from Figure 4.

C. Unemployment and Migration of Workers

The neoliberal model of economic development has created huge challenges for labour absorption in the country thus aggravating the pool of labour reserves. This again has many dimensions and multiple correlates. Many of these are connected with accelerated primitive accumulation, vis-à-vis the petty production, peasant agriculture and a whole host of activities broadly subsumed under informal production, who were earlier protected to a certain extent from the big capital (both foreign and domestic) under Nehruvian Socialism (dirigiste regimes) (Patnaik and Patnaik, 2019).

On the challenges of labour absorption in contemporary India, as we have argued earlier, there is “overwhelming dependence on agriculture which accounts for close to 50% of the total workforce. Significantly, as per the recent estimates, agriculture contributes only approximately one-sixth of the GDP of the country. This overcrowding of the workforce in agriculture and its ‘underemployment’ is structured by a high presence of wage labour and a declining number of people who report themselves as ‘cultivators’. As regards the non-agricultural sector, its single most important feature (quite like agriculture) is the extremely high proportion of vulnerable informal employment. Though the non-agricultural sector accounts for about half the work force, it contributes approximately 80% to the total GDP, with a very small segment of less than 10% of workers, in the organized sector. Of the total employment in the organized sector, almost 65–70 per cent is in the public sector (including public administration and defense services). The unemployment among the youth, in particular among the ‘educated’, is substantially higher than the overall rate of unemployment” (Jha, 2019; pp. 10–11).

One of the significant promises with which neoliberal policies ascended in India was adequate and appropriate employment opportunities to the growing workforce. However, as is clear from Table 4, the overall outcome has gone in the opposite direction.

Table 4: Unemployment rate (%) in India

	1993–94	1999–00	2004–05	2009–10	2011–12	2017–18
Rural (Male)	1.4	1.7	1.6	1.6	1.7	5.8
Rural (Female)	0.8	1	1.8	1.6	1.7	3.8
Rural (Total)	1.2	1.5	1.7	1.6	1.7	5.3
Urban (Male)	4	4.5	3.8	2.8	3	7.1
Urban (Female)	6.2	5.7	6.9	5.7	5.2	10.8
Urban (Total)	4.5	4.7	4.5	3.4	3.4	7.8

Source: Reserve Bank of India, Handbook of Statistics of the Indian States and NSS 2019. Periodic Labour Force Survey, 2019.

It is worth noting here that the massive and growing political outcry on the employment front, especially, in rural India during the first and half decades of economic reforms pushed the government to adopt the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in 2005, which provided some succour to the most vulnerable segments of the rural population, and has been a life line for them. After the General Elections in 2014, the National Democratic Alliance (led) by the BJP formed government at the Centre and has pursued a range of policies which have been, on the whole, disastrous on the employment front as is evident for the figures from Periodic Labour Force Survey 2017–18.

Reasons for poor labour absorption have been analysed in great detail by a large number of scholars working on India; for reasons of space, it is not possible for us to get into a discussion of the relevant issues here and those interested in these may refer to Jha (2016); Patnaik (2016); Patnaik and Patnaik (2019) among others. It also worth noting that the huge swelling of labour reserves in the country has impacted on quality of employment. Table 5 presents the total number of workforce in India in the formal and informal sectors. Apart from a rising number of informal workers, the most worrying fact is—the rise in informal workers in the formal sector, i.e. informalisation of formal sector workers.

Table 5: Distribution of Workers by Type of Employment and Sector

Sector/Worker	Total Employment (Million)
	Informal/Unorganised Workers	Formal/Organised Workers	Total Workers
1999–2000 (NSS 55th Round)
Informal/Unorganised sector	341.3 (99.6)	1.4 (0.4)	342.6 (100.0)
Formal/Organised sector	20.5 (37.8)	33.7 (62.2)	54.1 (100.0)
Total	361.7 (91.2)	35.0 (8.8)	396.8 (100.0)
2004–05 (NSS 61st Round)
Informal/Unorganised sector	393.5 (99.6)	1.4 (0.4)	394.9 (100.0)
Formal/Organised sector	29.1 (46.6)	33.4 (53.4)	62.6 (100.0)
Total	422.6 (92.4)	34.9 (7.6)	457.5 (100.0)
2009–10 (NSS 66th Round)
Informal/Unorganised sector	387.4 (99.4)	2.3 (0.6)	389.8 (100.0)
Formal/Organised sector	39.7 (56.5)	30.6 (43.5)	70.3 (100.0)
Total	427.5 (92.9)	32. 6 (7.1)	460.2 (100.0)
2011–12 (NSS 68th Round)
Informal/Unorganised sector	398.8 (99.6)	1.4 (0.4)	400.2 (100.0)
Formal/Organised sector	48.2 (57.1)	36.3 (42.9)	84.5 (100.0)
Total	447.0 (92.2)	37.7 (7.8)	484.7 (100.0)

Source: 1. NSS 66th and 68th Rounds of Employment-Unemployment Survey. Computed.

2. The figure for 55th and 61st round are adopted from the Report on Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in the Unorganised Sector, 2007. Note: Figures in brackets are percentages.

The informal sector workers (who are deprived of any kind of social security, paid leave etc.) are extremely vulnerable to any sudden economic shock. Further, even for the most protected category of workers (i.e. formal sector workers), there has been a substantial increase in vulnerability, as is evident from the Periodic Labour Force Survey (2017–18) conducted by the NSSO. The Survey indicated that among the regular wage/salaried employees, 69.2 percent in the rural areas and 72.4 percent in the urban areas and a total of 71.1 percent in whole India do not have written job contracts. The same survey also reveals that 56.2 percent in the rural areas and 52.8 percent in the urban areas and 54.2 percent at all India level, regular wage/salaried employees do not have any provision of paid leave; it also notes that, among the regular wage/salaried employees, 52.5 percent in rural areas, 47.7 percent in urban areas and 49.6 percent at all India level do not have any social security benefits.

Increasing challenges of labour absorption have contributed significantly to labour mobility. Unfortunately, there are serious data challenges relating to labour migration, which we are not in a position to pursue here. However, it is quite clear that during the period since the early 1990s, labour mobility in search of work has increased very substantially (Census, 2001, 2011; GoI, 2017; NSSO different rounds, Srivastava, 2020).

Compression of rural development expenditure, reduced access to land, growing landlessness among marginal and small farmers, increased vulnerabilities of peasant production, etc., which have strong organic connections with neoliberal policies, are obvious contributors to growing mobility in search of work; in short, much of labour migration in contemporary India is driven by distress. These ‘footloose’8 workers are constantly moving not only from rural to urban but to rural to rural and urban to rural as well, many of them cot into multitasking and perennial circuits of circular migration.

D. The Rise in Landlessness and Asset Inequality:

One of the major adverse outcomes of overall economic policies in rural India during the neoliberal era has been the rise in landlessness. Of course, there are other factors at work, such as, development and infrastructure projects, urbanisation, etc. which have put pressure on land for agricultural purposes. However, it is quite clear that a whole range of polices unleashed by neoliberalism have dramatically exacerbated the trend towards growing landlessness for at least the bottom half in the rural India and the trends for the recent years have been studied by several scholars (Rawal, 2008, 2013; Patnaik, 2012; Verma, 2015; Verma and Roy, 2019; GoI, 2013b). It is quite clear from the recent studies that more than 40 percent of households in rural India do not have access to cultivable land, (i.e. other than their homestead) (Rawal, 2008; GoI, 2009; Verma and Roy, 2019).

Table 6: Number of operational holdings and rural households in India (in Million)

Particulars	1990–91	2000–01	2010–11
Number of Operational Holdings	106.6	119.9	138.4
Number of Rural Households	108.2	132.4	179.7
Operation Holdings as Percent of Total Rural Households	98.56	90.58	77

Source: Agricultural Census, 1990–91 2000–01, 2010–11 and Census of India 1991, 2001, Socio-economic Caste Census, 2011.

Table 6 provides information on the number of operational holding and the total number of rural households in India. According to the official definition, “operational holdings include all lands which are used wholly or partly for agricultural production and is operated as one technical unit by one person alone or with household members without regard to the title, legal form, size or location” (GoI, 2019; pp 6). It is clear from the above table that access to land by rural households has drastically decreased in the period under consideration.

A study on asset inequality in India (Sarma et al., 2017), based on the All India Debt and Investment Survey (1991–92 (48th Round), 2002–03 (59th Round) and 2012–13 (70th Round)) shows the rise in asset inequality in rural and urban India. Decile-wise percentage asset holdings are given in Table 7. It shows that the assets held by the bottom 60 per cent in both the rural and urban areas have declined in the period from 1991–92 to 2012–13. Also, the assets held by the middle 35 per cent have declined. The top 5 per cent have witnessed an increase in their asset holdings both in rural and urban areas.

Table 7: Percent Share of Assets Held by Asset Deciles

Deciles	Rural Households			Urban Households
	1991–92	2002–03	2012–13	1991–92	2002–03	2012–13
0–10	0.21	0.23	0.25	0	0.01	0
10–20	0.84	0.95	0.89	0.02	0.05	0.04
20–30	1.56	1.68	1.50	0.25	0.45	0.30
30–40	2.52	2.53	2.26	0.99	1.38	0.98
40–50	3.75	3.61	3.23	2.09	2.55	1.96
50–60	5.25	5.09	4.51	3.72	4.20	3.40
60–70	7.39	7.13	6.31	6.08	6.67	5.45
70–80	10.62	10.33	9.16	9.67	10.74	8.76
80–90	17.17	16.88	15.39	16.94	18.42	15.38
90–100	50.70	51.57	56.50	60.24	55.54	63.72
Top 5 %	36.62	37.31	42.71	44.75	40	50.70
Middle 35%	49.25	48.60	44.65	48.18	51.36	42.62
Bottom 60 %	14.12	14.09	12.64	7.07	8.64	6.68

Source: Sarma et al., 2017

The inequality in land and other assets holdings is sharper if the data is further disaggregated by social categories (Sarma et al., 2017; Verma and Roy, 2019). It means that the Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes and the other backward classes, who are historically vulnerable with respect to assets, especially, land and are thus more vulnerable to food insecurity.