Population, Food and Hunger

And yet hunger persists, which sets the problem this chapter exists to answer.

The causes of hunger

This is the list the question asks for, and organising it as distribution, access and structure is what makes it an answer rather than a list.

Poverty and purchasing power. The first and largest cause. Food is available and cannot be bought. Hunger is therefore a function of income and employment far more than of harvests.

Entitlement failure. Sen's concept: a person obtains food through their entitlements, what they can produce, earn, exchange or claim. A labourer whose wage collapses, an artisan whose product loses its market, or a pastoralist whose herd dies loses the ability to command food although the market is full. Famine has occurred in years of adequate supply, which is the finding that made the approach decisive.

Distribution and access. Food in stores and not where people are; storage and transport losses; and the machinery of public distribution, whose failures are the exclusion and inclusion errors described in [The Welfare State].

Inequality within the household. The distribution of food inside a family is not equal, and women and girls frequently receive less, which is why household-level averages conceal individual hunger and why nutrition data by sex is collected separately.

Land and agrarian structure. Landlessness, tiny and fragmented holdings, tenancy without security, and indebtedness, which force distress sales of produce at harvest and repurchase at higher prices later.

Employment. Casual and seasonal work, which produces hunger between seasons rather than continuously, and which is why employment guarantee schemes are food policy as much as labour policy.

Conflict and displacement, which destroy both production and entitlement.

Climate and disaster: drought, flood, and the increasing variability that agriculture must now absorb.

Waste, both post-harvest loss for want of storage and consumption waste.

Nutrition as distinct from calories. Enough grain and inadequate protein, iron or micronutrients produces the condition called hidden hunger, which is why malnutrition can persist where calorie sufficiency has been achieved. India's own nutrition indicators are published in the National Family Health Survey, and figures should be taken from it and attributed.

Sen's contribution, stated properly

Because it is the heart of a good answer.

The entitlement approach: what a person can consume depends on their endowments, what they own including their labour, and on the exchange conditions on which those endowments can be converted into food. Hunger occurs when that mapping fails, whatever the aggregate supply.

The observation about famine and democracy, which is directly relevant to a law student: Sen argued that substantial famines have not occurred in functioning multi-party democracies with a free press, because governments facing elections and public scrutiny are compelled to act. The mechanism is not benevolence but accountability, which connects this chapter to [Mass Media and Its Impact] and to the right to information.

The Indian response

Legal and policy machinery, named as social facts: the National Food Security Act 2013, which creates entitlements to subsidised foodgrain for identified households and a maternity benefit, and which is the largest translation of the entitlement idea into law anywhere; the public distribution system through which it operates; the mid-day meal provision in schools, which is simultaneously nutrition, school attendance and social policy; the integrated child development services for children under six and for mothers; and the rural employment guarantee of 2005, which addresses hunger through income rather than through food.

The sociological questions about all of them are the same, and asking them is what makes an answer sociological rather than descriptive: who is identified as eligible, who is excluded, whether the shop is open and stocked, whether the grain reaches the household, whether it is eaten by everyone in it, and whether a person denied their entitlement has any effective remedy. Every one of those is answerable by the methods in Module III, and that is the connection this chapter makes to the rest of the syllabus.

A worked example

A landless labouring household in a drought year.

What the aggregate figures say: the state holds stocks; national production is at a record; there is no shortage of food anywhere in the country.

What happens to the household. Agricultural work disappears because the crop failed, so the wage income stops. The household has no land, so it produces nothing. The price of grain rises locally. It borrows, and the interest consumes what income returns. Its entitlement has collapsed while supply is abundant, which is Sen's point in one household.

What the machinery is supposed to do: the ration card gives an entitlement under the Act of 2013; the employment guarantee gives a right to work at a wage; and the school meal feeds the children whatever else happens.

Where it fails, and each failure is sociologically patterned rather than random: the household is a recent migrant and is not on the list; the card is in the name of a member who has migrated; the fair price shop is open irregularly; work under the guarantee is not provided within the statutory period and the household cannot afford to wait; and nobody in the household can read the notice that explains the grievance procedure.

The conclusion for an answer. Hunger here was not caused by a shortage of food and was not cured by the existence of a right. It was caused by the collapse of an entitlement and prolonged by the failure of the machinery meant to replace it, and both of those are social facts that research can measure and law can address, which is why the question is on a law syllabus at all.

Quick revision

1. The world produces enough food; hunger is a problem of distribution and entitlement, not of aggregate supply.
2. Malthus: population increases geometrically, subsistence arithmetically; positive checks (famine, disease, war) and preventive checks (delayed marriage). It did not happen because productivity rose and fertility fell.
3. Demographic transition: high birth and death rates; falling deaths with high births, producing rapid growth; falling births; then low and stable. Growth is a transition, not a permanent condition.
4. Sen's entitlement approach: consumption depends on endowments and the terms on which they exchange for food; famine has occurred in years of adequate supply.
5. Sen on democracy: substantial famines have not occurred in functioning multi-party democracies with a free press, because accountability compels action.
6. Causes of hunger: poverty and purchasing power; entitlement failure; distribution and access; inequality within the household; landlessness and agrarian structure; casual and seasonal employment; conflict; climate and disaster; waste; and hidden hunger, the deficiency of nutrients rather than calories.
7. Indian machinery: National Food Security Act 2013, the public distribution system, mid-day meals, child development services, and the employment guarantee of 2005, which addresses hunger through income.
8. The sociological questions are always about identification, exclusion, delivery, intra-household distribution and remedy, and they are answered by Module III's methods.

Test yourself

1. Why is hunger not explained by shortage of food? Because food production per person has risen substantially at world level and in India, which moved from importing foodgrain to holding public stocks, while hunger has persisted throughout. If aggregate supply were the cause, hunger would have fallen with production. It follows that the operative causes lie in who can obtain food: purchasing power, the terms on which people can exchange what they have for food, the machinery of distribution, and the allocation of food within households.

2. State Malthus's argument and say why it did not occur as predicted. That population, unchecked, increases geometrically while subsistence increases arithmetically, so population tends always to outrun the means of subsistence and is restrained by positive checks, famine, disease and war, and by preventive checks, chiefly the postponement of marriage. It did not occur as predicted because agricultural productivity rose far faster than he allowed for, through technology, irrigation, fertiliser and improved varieties; because fertility fell as societies developed, which he did not anticipate; and because trade moves food between regions.

3. Explain Sen's entitlement approach. That what a person can consume depends on their endowments, which include their labour and any assets, and on the exchange conditions on which those endowments can be converted into food. Hunger occurs when that mapping fails: a labourer whose wage collapses, an artisan whose product loses its market or a pastoralist whose herd dies loses the ability to command food although markets are full. Its decisive support is that famines have occurred in years of adequate aggregate supply, which no scarcity explanation can accommodate.

4. Give six causes of hunger. Poverty and lack of purchasing power, which is the largest; entitlement failure, where the ability to command food collapses although supply is adequate; failures of distribution and access, including irregular public distribution; inequality within the household, which leaves women and girls with less and which household averages conceal; landlessness, fragmented holdings, insecure tenancy and indebtedness; and casual or seasonal employment, which produces hunger between seasons. To these are added conflict and displacement, climate and disaster, waste, and hidden hunger from deficiency of nutrients rather than calories.

5. What is the connection Sen draws between famine and democracy, and why does it matter here? That substantial famines have not occurred in functioning multi-party democracies with a free press, because a government facing elections and public scrutiny is compelled to act before the situation becomes catastrophic. The mechanism is accountability rather than benevolence. It matters on a law syllabus because it makes political and legal institutions, elections, a free press and access to information, part of the machinery of food security, alongside entitlements such as those created by the National Food Security Act 2013.