Minister for food and civil supplies (MFCS) Sharad Pawar has raised serious questions about the efficacy of the much awaited Food Security Act which is being hotly debated in government.
With names of 1.8 crore families having been removed from the BPL lists prepared by state governments, the Planning Commission is awaiting the final figures of the newly-prepared lists in which the numbers will show a major increase.
“Funds are not a problem. Nor am I worried about the burden this will cause on the exchequer. My concern is with food availability. Will we have enough food to feed the growing population,” the minister stated in an interaction with the press.
Mr Pawar admitted that there was a major crisis in agriculture with 82 per cent of farmers owning less than two hectares of land while 60 per cent had no assured water, food productivity has emerged as the key issue of his ministry.
Pressure on the land is going to mount especially with India’s population touching 1.5 billion in 2030.
“We have 17 per cent of the world’s population but only 4 per cent of agriculture and 4.5 per cent of world’s agriculture. With 65 per cent of the population having to survive off the land, this was one of the reasons why farmers continued to commit suicide.”
Quoting home ministry figures, he stated that 1.5 lakh farmers had committed suicide but he went on to explain that suicides are not restricted to one section of society. “Sixteen to 20 per cent of suicides in India are from the farming community and this has been happening for the last 30-40 years,” said the minister.
It was to counter this that the government had written off credit amounting to Rs 86,000 crores.
“This year, credit of Rs 3,82,000 crores has been dispensed too,” he explained.
Commenting on rising food prices, Mr Pawar said, “My main concern is with food production. When sugar prices rose, people said import sugar but this would have immediately affected domestic production. Farmers would have shifted to some other crop.”