Tackling Word Hunger is Need of the Hour

It has been one of the driving factors behind the French Revolution in the eighteenth Century where the lack of bread in Paris was also the reason other than demands for political freedom.

It has been the cause and effect of many riots occurring due to unjustified government policies causing severe economic hardship and clashing with the basic human right to food.

Tea, a non-edible food item, was used as a protest tool to protest the British tax on tea imported to the colonies by a group of Boston citizens.

The food crises around the world led to the immediate establishment of the World Food Programme.

Moreover, many other United Nations agencies have incorporated hunger or food security in their work programs, which include the United Nations Children Education Fund, the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Development Programme, and the different United Nations missions to war-torn countries.

The loose definition of the term ‘hunger has led to adaptation in its meaning often to serve the purposes of those experiencing it. In affluent countries, especially, hunger is the gnawing pain in the stomach for many on missing a meal.

On the contrary, another form of hunger is the physical debilitation of those affected by chronic undernutrition.

However, a hunger that encloses the emotional and political aspects of society is multidimensional. It involves the anguish of a farmer who in a dilemma to pay the rent for the land or feed his family has the only option left to sell the produce from his farm.

It includes the pain of suffering one goes through to see in helplessness one’s loved ones die for violating the practices and policies set by the few dominant elites.

The imposition of laws and regulations is just to ensure that the poor and hungry are compelled to provide their labor in lieu of low wages or small quantities of food.

Regulations are imposed to reduce the chances of self-sustenance in the poor so that their existing condition remains unaltered.

The schemes run by the Indian government on providing rice and wheat at extremely subsidized rates are also of little help to the poor as either the grain is black marketed or its quality is too poor for consumption by any human being.

The main cause of hunger in some parts of the world is considered to be population growth, which puts pressure on the limited resources of the world.

Thomas Malthus, an English economist, argued that food and water supply at some point would be unavoidably outstripped due to fertile land and safe drinking water being finite resources.

Therefore, a disastrous consequence of a high population growth rate would be anarchy and mass starvation.

Some drastic measures have been taken to reduce the population growth rate based on this belief and the problem of addressing their needs.

Hunger, which is the cause and effect of poverty, is responsible for the depletion of people physically, physiologically, and psychologically. For the poor to earn a living, the most abundant asset available is labor.

However, this labor is of no avail due to hunger that further entraps the poor in hunger and poverty. The everyday struggle of finding food for the family relinquishes any thought of long-term development in the miserably poor.

Even after the discovery of many innovative ways by modern
technology and medical research to fight various pests and diseases, famines have been in serious trouble for a long time.

The increasing pressure to resolve the food crisis among the world’s population has led to the utilization of marginal, erosion-prone lands and deforestation. This causes the environment to be more inclined to famine situations and undermines the fertility of the land. Natural disasters do not discriminate the poor from the rich and affect them alike.

Reconstructing agriculture to be more self-reliant and discouraging specialization could be an alternative solution to hunger in the modern-day.

Increasing self-reliance can result in reducing the help from aid agencies, thus attaining this long-term measure. Farm cooperatives should be developed to support and facilitate the farming activities of farmworkers and those urban migrants who wish to return to their rural homes.

Food security can also be enhanced by increasing the amount of arable land under cultivation. It would be an incentive to reduce or cancel debts owed by farmers to increase their contribution
towards ensuring food security.

The inability of farmworkers and small farmers to claim a fair price for their labor and the goods produced by them in a monopoly-controlled market leads to their exploitation. It has been the major cause of frequent suicides in rural districts.

The skeletal look of people in places, such as Ethiopia, Somalia, and closer home in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, etc. will cause frequent embarrassment to us unless urgent warlike steps are taken up to tackle this menace across the world.

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