How to eradicate hunger

Dr. M S Swaminathan, one of the most important Indians of the 20th century according to Time magazine who helped transform India from a food-deficit country to a self-sufficient one, lays down his blueprint for 21st century India in an exclusive interview.

by Parshuram Ray

Dr M S Swaminathan, the eminent agricultural scientist who is currently chairman of the Chennai-based M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, was recently selected by Time magazine as the third most important Indian of the 20th century, after Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore..

Dr Swaminathan's name is synonymous with India and the Green Revolution which helped transform a food-deficit country into a self-sufficient, food-exporting one. Over a period of 50 years, he has held various positions and earned innumerable national and international awards. Dr Swaminathan served as director of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, between 1966 and 1972, director general, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, secretary of the Department of Agricultural Research and Education, Government of India (1972-79), principal secretary, Indian Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation (1979-80), acting deputy chairman and later member in-charge of agriculture, rural development, science and environment for India's Planning Commission (1980-82) and director general, International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines (1982-87). Among the various awards conferred on him are the First World Food Prize at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, in 1987, a prize widely regarded to be agriculture's Nobel Prize, the Ramon Magsaysay Award for community leadership in 1971, the Albert Einstein World Award for Science (1986) and the UNEP-Sasakawa Environment Prize (1994).

In an exclusive interview with Parshuram Ray at the Swaminathan Foundation in Chennai, Dr Swaminathan spoke about the various challenges and opportunities in the fields of agriculture and food security. He also provided a blueprint for a hunger-free India. Here are some excerpts.

What, in your opinion, are the major challenges and problems confronting India as regards agriculture and food security?

The first major challenge is to retain prime farmland for agriculture. Good farmland is being used for non-farming purposes. If this happens on a continuing basis, we will be in serious difficulty. So, the conservation of land and water is the Number 1 issue. Second, how to retain young people on the farms. Whether educated or uneducated, the youth are increasingly not taking to farming. It is all left to their parents or grandparents. Students from agricultural universities do not go back to the farms, they do something else. They take up jobs in the city. Now, this has serious consequences because our country is predominantly young. The youth must be motivated and they can be motivated only if farming is more economically rewarding and intellectually satisfying. This is where modern ecological agriculture offers great opportunities. We must do our best to attract and retain our youth in farming. Third, the question of the cost, risk and return-structure of farming. The economics of farming -- import-export policies, trade policies, the impact of the World Trade Agreement. If there is a lot of dumping of cheap food in India from outside, then I think our livelihood will be destroyed.

Therefore, the three challenges are: We have to produce more food from less land, but we must conserve the land -- prime farmland --for agriculture. We must produce more jobs, livelihood, employment opportunities and, above all, we must increase the income of the farm-family, because out of over 100 million farm-families in our country, 75 million are very small farmers, marginal farmers. The smaller the farm, the greater the need for marketable supplies from the farm. So we need more intensification, diversification and value-addition in farming.

What are the available opportunities in this field?

We have a very large, untapped yield-reservoir, even at currently available levels of technology. First of all, we have great opportunities for increasing our production immediately by taking advantage of the untapped yield-reservoir available even without big technologies on the shelf. We don't need big technologies for, say, a crop like rice. Our average yield is less than 2.5 tonnes per hectare. China's average yield is 5 tonnes, Korea 7 tonnes, Japan also 7 tonnes. We can almost double our yield in rice without additional technology. What is needed is appropriate services (inputs, supplies, services like seeds and water and so on), the timely availability of inputs and assured and remunerative marketing opportunities. If there is an assured and remunerative marketing opportunity, our farmers will do the rest because they are good economists.

Another major opportunity we have today is seeing whether we can take advantage of our capability to produce almost all forms of fruits, vegetables, flowers in our country. We have a diverse climate, diverse soil conditions, therefore we can grow temperate, sub-tropical, sub-temperate and tropical fruits and vegetables. This is a great opportunity. We now produce over 125 million tonnes of vegetables and fruits. But our post-harvest technology is poor. There's a mismatch between production and post-harvest technology. Our processing, cold-storage, refrigerator vans, packaging -- these are still very poor. Where we have made advances is in post-harvest technology, for example in Maharashtra, in the case of grapes, strawberries and alphonso mangoes. The opportunities for us to market good-quality fruits and vegetables in India are great. It is a sad commentary today that we have to import apples from Australia. I find, in the Chennai market, that all the apples are from Australia even though we produce good-quality apples in Himachal Pradesh and J&K. It's sad that our government policies are such that we are not able to take full advantage of what we have. For example, in 1981, in a committee chaired by me, we recommended a National Horticulture Development Board along the lines of the National Dairy Development Board. Look at how professionally run the NDDB is. It is thanks to Dr Kurien, Dr Amrita Patel and all their colleagues that our country has increased our milk production from 25 million tonnes to 75 million tonnes. We have now become the largest milk-producing country in the world. All this is possible. We would have had the same success in horticulture if the National Horticulture Development Board had not been run by bureaucrats. I think it is the tragedy of our agriculture that our agricultural policies are being made, and agricultural departments run, by people who do not know agriculture, who do not know the problems of the farmers. This is self-inflicted damage. You can't blame any outside country for this. We, our own political system and our own mindset -- our colonial mindset -- are responsible.

The third great opportunity in our country is becoming a leading grain exporter. As I said earlier, from the present 85 million tonnes of rice, we can go up to a minimum 150 million tonnes. We can't absorb it, therefore we have to reduce it. We import pulses from Australia and Myanmar. It's again tragic that with the so-called pulse technology mission we should hold the person who's responsible accountable for this. There's no accountability in our country, otherwise we should be able to produce more pulses. It's tragic to have to import pulses from outside. We are the home of the pulses. India is the centre of origin of the pulse crop. Both for home production and for external consumption or export we have enormous opportunity in this country. But there are three important things which are to be done. First, we must professionalise our agricultural departments; they must be run by professionals. Second, we must end the mismatch between production technology and post-harvest technology. Post-harvest processing is what adds value to the crop. Therefore, production, processing and marketing should be looked at as integrated links in one chain. Third, we must develop long-term import-export policies which will not damage the livelihood security of our producers. Ours is a country of small producers. Agriculture is the largest productive enterprise, with over 100 million families involved in it. Our milk revolution would have been completely destroyed had we allowed indiscriminate import of milk and milk-powder and butter from North America and Europe. Because there it is produced through highly-mechanised large-scale farming. Our small producers cannot compete. In any case, they have enough money to subsidise -- very heavy subsidies are being given by the European Union on agriculture. Therefore, we will have to have a proper policy. The so-called National Agriculture Policy statement has not yet come. As and when it does, I hope it will address the real issues.

Do you see any positive trends that could give us hope in the fields of agriculture and food security ?

The most important positive trend in our country is the enormous enthusiasm and willingness of farm-men and farm-women to take to new technologies. They have no hesitation in taking to any new technology provided it will improve their livelihood and well-being. As I said earlier, the cost-risk and return-structure of farming influence their decision-making. The most hopeful trend is the emergence of new technologies. We have new tools in the form of information technology, including Internet in local languages. We have seen, in our own centre, the enormous impact of communication technology on reaching the unreached, as we say. We have a great deal of opportunity here because we have great competence in this country in space technology, space satellites, communication and television. We have great capacity in the fields of information technology and bio-technology. We also have lots of traditional wisdom, for example in the case of medicinal plants which are the hope of health security systems not only in India but of the world. We have a lot of traditional knowledge and material but we ourselves are lagging behind. We go on complaining that other countries are patenting neem or turmeric or haldi or karela and so on. There's no point in complaining. We must put our own house in order. We must immediately enact three important acts. First, the National Biodiversity Act which provides a mechanism for the conservation and sustainable use and equitable sharing of benefits. Second, we must also pass the Plant Varieties Protection Act soon. The farmers' rights must be completely protected. Third, we must have a Geographic Appellation Act by which nobody can patent basmati or anything of this kind. Today we are defenceless. In a world of increasing global competition we are fighting our battles without any defence. As I said, we can't blame others. One day somebody asked me: "What about the terminator?" I said, "We can terminate the terminator provided we terminate our lethargy first, otherwise we will not be able to terminate anything at all."

Can you tell us about some positive cases, innovative experiments and good initiatives which could become the seeds for your `pro-nature, pro-poor, pro-woman development' paradigm in India?

There are a large number of positive cases in our country. For example, in the case of water-management, Anil Agarwal and his group have brought out Dying Wisdom. Even in desert areas of Rajasthan, such as Jaisalmer, Barmer, there still is drinking water, whereas in Cherrapunji, which has the world's highest rainfall, there is no drinking water in the summer months. Like Ralegaon Siddhi, there are many water-harvesting, watershed-management projects. Our own bio-villages and information villages have been quoted in the Human Development Report of the UNDP. Also by the US National Academy of Science as the finest example of taking technology to the poorest of the poor, to women on a pro-women, pro-poor, pro-nature basis. We have a number of examples spread over the country, work done mainly through non-governmental organisations or voluntary civil society organisations with the motivation. Many of them also have the technological capability. So we have positive cases in every area. Go to a place near Balarshah. Sardar Ajit Singh, a wonderful man, was a forest contractor who came from Pakistan with nothing, in 1947. If you go to his orchard, you will see one of the world's best orchards. It is like an oasis in a desert. It is in the Chanderpur district in Maharashtra.

I can give you hundreds of examples in animal husbandry, in horticulture, in fisheries, in agriculture, in our country. But these are all isolated examples. A country progresses only when the average is high. Some of our pandits produce 10-12 tonnes of rice, but our average is low. If a country has one Nobel laureate, like C V Raman, it does not improve your science as a whole. It is really the average that makes the country and our average is poor. Going on talking about Anna Hazare or the Chipko Andolan will not help us. A mass movement has to begin. The unique must become the universal. That has to be our aim and that is what our Centre is dedicated to.

Do you think that hunger can be banished from India? Can you give us a blueprint or plan of action for the eradication of hunger from India?

We have been working on how to eradicate hunger totally from this country and we feel that we are now at the end of our work. We have reached the final milestone, as you may call it. We can immediately take seven steps to realise that end. First, use the gram sabhas. The finance minister called this year the Year of the Gram Sabha. Recently, the prime minister said that gram panchayats alone can save us. Let these not remain mere words. In my view, every gram sabha should identify the ultra poor, those who are going hungry, in their village. I find that if you leave it to them they will not come up with fake data because they have to do it in the publicity way. Though the Planning Commission says 35 per cent of people are below the poverty line, we find that only 10-15 per cent of people are really going to bed hungry. Largely because they have no money. Also, a large number of them are dalits, they have no land, no livestock, no assets. So first identify the ultra poor.

Second, information empowernment of the poor. We find that the governments of our country invariably have at least 120-140 schemes supposed to reach the poor. The poor are not aware of this. So, what we have done in our Information Village is to set up a database and it's operated by dalit women. Anyone can come here and find out about the schemes available to them. In a democracy, information empowernment is required which is why Aruna Roy and others in Rajasthan have started the Right to Information campaign. If all the available schemes were to be really implemented there would be no hunger. I can name 145 schemes available in a small place like Pondicherry, but nothing reaches the poor at all.

Third, protein-calorie under-nutrition. The government has three schemes targetted at the PDS. They have recently started one called Annapurna for older people. I have written to the prime minister to implement a new scheme for pregnant mothers because every third child born in our country is underweight. This affects brain development, among other things. It should cost us only two-three-million tonnes of foodgrain. All pregnant women who are undernourished should be treated through this scheme. Fourth, micro-nutrients such as vitamin A, iodine and so on, now iodised salt, are available. The silent hunger, hidden hunger caused by a deficiency of micro-nutrients, must immediately be eliminated.

Fifth, sanitation -- what we call biological absorption. A child may eat a lot but it is not able to absorb its food. We may make food availabile in the market, and provide the ability to buy it, but a child must have the capacity to absorb it too. Sixth, livelihood opportunities -- micro-credit, micro enterprises.

And lastly, special attention must be afforded to women and small children, particularly pregnant women, nursing mothers and young, pre-school children.

To attend to all these seven points, the additional cost is not very great, as per our calculations. Only, there must be an efficient implementation of ongoing programmes, plus a few critical gaps. The BJP government and its allies have stated in their agenda that they will work for a hunger-free India within the next five years. We must work towards this.

What is your vision for the 21st century?

In my view, the 21st century is going to be an ecology century of hope, caused largely by the communication revolution in India, the print media, mass media, electronic media and panchayati raj institutions. We have a unique opportunity to manage all our natural resources sustainably, to ensure a hunger-free India and to make good Gandhiji's vision that every man, woman and child in this country has an opportunity to lead a productive and healthy life. That is much more important than putting men in space, or on the moon. Let the Americans do that. This is not our priority. We must get our priorities right.

Parshuram Ray is an environmental activist, researcher and writer based in New Delhi.

Published in Humanscape, September-2000.