by ZUBEIDA MUSTAFA
Last Friday the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) organised a ‘March against Hunger’ to demand that the government and civil society enhance people’s awareness of their right to basic nutrition and food security through combined efforts.
I think this event was most timely given the utter lack of public understanding of the issue. One example of poor knowledge of the subject was an observation on my column ‘Whose land is this?’ (Nov 20) where I had pointed out the adverse impact of our failure to introduce land reforms as being the “rise in food insecurity” leading to nearly 50pc of Pakistan’s population suffering from malnourishment.
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The major cause of this unhappy phenomenon is the high food inflation that was 14pc in 2012-2013 and 18pc in 2010-2011. The Pakistan Economic Survey reminds us that the retail price of wheat flour in 2000-2001 was about Rs10 per kilogramme. In 2013 it had shot up to Rs35 per kilogramme.
This happened at a time wheat production went up from 20 million tonnes to 24m tonnes per annum. And if some studies do conclude the average calorie intake per head is almost at par with figures for other countries, it is pretty obvious that more food is being consumed by the affluent than what is their need. As in all other sectors — education, healthcare, income, land ownership, etc — food consumption follows a similar inequitable pattern.
The privileged ‘haves’ possess enough resources to spend on exotic food items that are a luxury rather than a basic need. In fact, their food budget is a fraction of their total income. The poor spend more than half their budget on a diet that is meagre in quantity and substandard in quality.
This does not cause people to drop dead on the road. But it certainly causes very serious problems of another kind. People denied good food are unhealthy, malnourished and prone to illnesses of all kinds which means their work output is low and their quality of life is terrible.
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The Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, a professor of economics at Cambridge, pointed out many years ago that people die of starvation during famines not because there is a scarcity of food, but because food doesn’t reach them.
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