India’s Hunger Problem: A Comparative Analysis of the Performances of Food Distribution at the National level and in the State of Tamil Nadu

Sammanfattning: Food is fundamental for humans to survive and vital for development. Food security is a major issue and sustaining it is a challenge for the countries of the world. With climate change and other environmental andsocial factors greatly influencing the current chances for world food security, it is of prime importance for countries to work towards achieving it. A major part of the poor and vulnerable section of people lives in the developing and poor countries with rampant food insecurity issues. To achieve the UN‟s Millennium Development goal of halving hunger by 2015, food security measures are implemented in poor and developing countries with the help of world organizations to alleviate poverty and hunger. This paper studies the situation in India, where poverty and hunger is a major block for the development progress. India has proven its authority in various fields with a fast developing economy. On the other hand, poverty and hunger prevail among almost half of the country‟s people. The country has taken various measures to attain food security and curb hunger among the poor. The major welfare measure in the country is the food distribution schemes implemented by the government. The performance among different states in the country varies due to various factors. The performances of the country as a whole and of the southern state of Tamil Nadu are taken into consideration for this paper. The paper will deal with the performance and related issues such as policies, administration, operations and social influences on the food distribution system in a comparison between Tamil Nadu and the rest of the country. Based on the official records on procurement and distribution of food grains as well as on literature studies on the food security situation in India and Tamil Nadu state, this paper suggests that there is a need to modify the mechanisms that constitute the distribution system, which can be learnt from Tamil Nadu state where the performance is better than the average for India as a whole. Even though Tamil Nadu faces similar problems asother States, the better performance of Tamil Nadu does not affect the food distribution system in the country. At the national level, the situation is worse with magnified problems of performance affecting the food distribution system.