Food Security
Thursday December 30 2004 08:15 IST
By Karmayogi
The UN is decried as a
spent force. It is often described as a forum where member nations find an
occasion to let off steam. The US withdrew from the UN for a period and
in many of her initiatives ignored the existence of the UN.
The issue of Kashmir referred to the UN 50 years ago still
hangs fire. Surely the UN is not as effective as it was intended to be. Life
has many surprises. One of them is the usefulness of the useless. The service
that the various bodies of the UN have rendered is immense. FAO, the Food and
Agricultural Organisation set up under the UN, is one such body. Its activities
are multifarious and its utility enormous.
The phrase Food Security is in use for over 30 years. Whoever coined it, coined
it with a perception of wisdom. In the sixties, there was an alarm in view of
the vast food shortage anticipated. FAO warned the concerned nations of the
dire consequences well ahead of time.
Some rose to the occasion and acted with determination. Everyone was made aware
of the importance of food production, especially in view of the bulging
population. Today FAO declares that the world grows enough food for the
increased population. Now FAO talks of Food Security. Abundant availability of
food is the first essential. Availability does not ensure a RIGHT to food.
Not even the right generates security. As far as food is concerned, the
availability of food becomes real only when there is purchasing power to buy
food. Surveys declare scarcity exists only when people are unemployed.
Guarantees of employment will guarantee the availability of food on the table.
But security is a sense, far removed from availability and right. It was
prophetic of Bharathi, the national poet of Tamilnadu, to have said that we
would destroy the earth if food is not available for a single soul.
A seven year child travels from one continent to another by air because there
is a sense of security in air travel. Uneducated, old ladies are able to go to USA from India because of this sense of security. Security is a sense of the whole Being granted not by law
but by the ease and comfort of the atmosphere. Thank God the famines FAO
predicted in the sixties did not become a reality. Storage godowns are
overflowing with excess grains.
That is abundant availability. It does not confer to the individual a legal
right to food. Law grants the right to vote, to education, to justice. It is
not customary to confer a right to food. In the USSR when there was full
employment, such a right was implied. No country thinks of granting a right to
food. Still, that RIGHT has a vast implication for the existence of MAN.
A sense of security about food will gather in the personality of Man when the
country is prosperous, food is abundant and when he knows that society will not
countenance even a single soul going hungry.