1. Comcom: Sir, despite green revolution and record harvest, and overflowing godowns,one section of our population still does not have a two square meals of food per day. what is the evaluation of the problem.

Prof Singh: Food security or the hunger the opposite of food security, is an element which is based on three major things viz. increased production or inadequate production access to food both economic and physical. If these three things are together obviously then a person will be full fed. India has produced as we understand today 209 million tons of food grain at about 40 million are of surplus stock as buffer stock. But about 208 million people in india are still hungry. obviously if that food get distributed and given to everyone no one will be hungry. so it is a question of access to food. that is the economic access to food on the part of the poor is not there. this is why we have a very large proportion one fifth of our poppulation is hungry. therefore if hunger has to be eliminated from india, while we have produced enough we have all to see that economic growth takes place. Therefore the emphasis is on the economic growth for those who are poor. Poverty and hunger both have to be eliminated side by side it is a hand and glove relationship between the two. if you are poor, even if thereis food in the market you can not get it because you can not buy it. it is as simple as that.  

2. Comcom: The present government with its national agenda of creating a hunger free India, have announcied schemes,are they extremely good Would you like to throw some light on that? Prof Singh: I think, it is a very welcome on the part of the govt. It will help the poorest of the poor because the prices whcih have been fixed for wheat and rice are absolutely lowest and that will increase the economic access on the part of the poor people. For example, the food that they have to buy from the openmarket will cost four times, than they buy it from the distribution system. The public distribution system and therefore this government's approach is absolutely a wonderful approach and this has to be admired. And such approaches do provide the safety net as we call it is a welcome move.   3. Comcom: Why the efforts of some good people, organiations and government failed to eradicate hunger. Prof Singh: Well hunger cannot be eradicated unless we have not seen the eradication of poverty. We can see the production has been growing very well and today we are having enough food which we just divide it by the number of people we will have enough food available to meet the minimum kilo calorie requirement of a normal human being of india. For example we recommend a normal kilo calorie requirement of somewhere around 2200kcal. But the available food will meet around 2470kcal per person perday. Obviously, we have more food than what is required, if we just go by the simple calculation of food requirement. But you see, what happens that this food is not equally available to everyone so there are two things. One is called National Food Securtiy and the other one is called household security. The National Food Security, yes, we have achieved in terms to toal food production. But when it comes to the individual family food security, we have not achieved it. Even in the individual family there are disparity and inequities. For example, the male member of the family probably gets the preference the women one who is in the last. The child comes in between and therefore even in the family there is inequity. This has to be removed unless this is removed possibly it does not matter which organisation, and how many good people work this attitude this educational this health care all those aspects are very important to eliminate hunger. or to reach those who are hunger.   4. Comcom: It is well known that growing meat requirements need a lot of land because livestock is to be fed on food grains. if you reach the world, they started becoming vegetarian, they stop eating meat do you think it is going to helpus because lot of food will be available for them Prof Singh : Well, let us talk about our own country first we can not impose any restriction on the food habit of anyone. Still about 93% of the total kcal cconsumed per person on an average in India comes from crop based products. Only 7% comes from livestock and which includes fisheries. so you can imagine cereals, roots and tubers, fruits and vegetables, cokarse grains, these are the things which result into the several intake of foods which accounts to 92%. The animal based products only accounts for 7% and in that meat is very small, hardly 1% or less than 1%. Therefore the total consumption of meat in our Indian diet is very very small less than 1 % it is the intake of milk which is very very important and we encourgae and the milk intake has been growing and then it wil grow on. it is the poultry which is growing and it will grow on about 7% growth of annualgrowth of poultry will make up about 4.75 % so these are the initial increases which are taking places on the right side and all said animal product is not for the meat and animal product are for many other things which are very important and to supplement proper nutrition it is not to meet adequate energy. It is also balance of protein, it is also balance of fat, it is also balance of minerals which are important fora nutritious diet. so it is not only food securtiy but also about nutritional education. Nutritional education can come from various sources which are very important so we shall not discourage livestock production; in fact livestock production should grow in a bigger way than what we have so far. It need not compete with human being there are several ways in which the livestock could be reached where the competition between the livestock and human food and animal food can be separated andcan not be in competion. It could be complementation. both could be developed together therefore our policies should be to encourgae production rather than cutting the livestock. but our strategy for promoting the two will be different.   Thank you Prof Singh for sparing your valuable time.