| UN report slams India for farmer suicides |
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An UN report on on the Extent of Chronic Hunger and Malnutrition has said that even though India has enough food to feed its one billion people, hunger and household-level food insecurity have increased since the latter half of the 1990s. "One explanation may be that the assumed cost of a minimum food basket no longer reflects the real cost of food in India. Poverty remains concentrated in Bihar, UP, Orissa, MP, Maharashtra and Karnataka. In some states, feudalistic patterns of land ownership persist despite legal abolition and the Land Ceiling Act,"the report said. Slamming India for the rising number of farmer suicides, the report said sustained economic growth in the 1990s made the country a more market oriented economy but did not benefit all Indians equally. Middle and upper classes benefited from 'India Shining' but the poor suffered a decline in living standards. The focus on a more export oriented economy has seen a shift from subsistence to cash crops, reducing the cultivation of grains, pulses and millets for household consumption. With cash crops requiring increasingly expensive inputs such as seeds and fertiliser, many farmers have been pushed heavily into debt explaining the increasing number of farmer suicides, nearly 10,000 by 2004. The report also criticised India for changing Public Distribution System, the world's largest food-based safety net, from a universal system to a targeted one in 1997. This created the paradox of huge excess stocks of foodgrain held with the FCI, adding to costs and therefore to the losses, leading to a substantially higher food subsidy. Kounteya Sinha Source: THE TIMES OF INDIA
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