With 159 children below five dying due to malnutrition in 2009, Madhya Pradesh is facing an acute food security crisis. The state suffers from the lowest food consumption levels in India which have further declined from 11 kg per month to 9 kg per month over the last five years.
The state adviser to the commissioners of the Supreme Court submitted a report last week on the status of food and welfare schemes in Madhya Pradesh highlighting that MP (not Orissa) is home “to the largest number of hungry people in the country”.
Not only has food grain production declined in the last decade but despite high inflation, food expenditure levels of the rural public have remained frozen at Rs 87 to buy 9 kg of grain per person per month.
Not surprising therefore that as per the 2005-6 NFHS data, around 60 per cent of children under three are malnourished while only 36 per cent of the kids were fully immunised.
This data flies in the face of the state government’s claim that 63 per cent of children were immunised in 2008-9. The state has the second highest percentage of anaemic children (74 per cent) after Bihar and reports the highest percentage of tribal women suffering anaemia also at 74 per cent.
The problem is further compounded with the Planning Commission having declared that a family spending Rs 327 per month in a rural settlement will not be considered as poor. In an urban settlement, the benchmark expenditure level has been kept at Rs 570 per person per month.
In other words, a person spending Rs 9 or more on food grain in a village and Rs 19 in an urban area is not poor and therefore cannot be included in the PDS.
The Planning Commission has recently accepted the Tendulkar Committee report which uses the prevailing urban poverty line as the benchmark with which to measure poverty. Even if we were to go by the Tendulkar Committee, 54 per cent of the rural population in MP is living below the poverty line whereas the Dr N.C. Saxena Committee report puts the figure at 67 per cent.
This blame game is being played out between the Centre and the state. The Centre insists 41 lakh BPL families should be covered by PDS but the state government insists 67 lakh families should be under BPL and therefore eligible for 35 kg of grain per month because of reduced allotment from the Centre. A survey in MP showed that the state government should distribute 35 kg of ration per family to 67 lakh families which works out to 2,35,726 metric tones of grain. under PDS. The ministry of food was releasing only 1,44,373 metric tones of grain per month which would feed 41 lakh BPL families. In other words, 26 lakh BPL families were not receiving subsidised food grain.