• ISBN13: 9788126928750
• Binding: Hardcover
• Subject: Bio-Science and Agriculture
• Publisher: Atlantic Publishers & Distributors (P) Ltd
• Publisher Imprint: Atlantic
• Publication Date: May 20, 2019
• Pages: 272
• Original Price: INR 795.0
• Language: English
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 500 grams
• BISAC Subject(s): History & Theory

The essays collected in this book deal with various aspects of food security in a developing country like India, which is house for a large number of poor people living with hunger and malnutrition. Written over a period of more than two decades since the 1990s, these essays examine the macro level food security of India in terms of the long-term log linear trends in the minimum requirement of 2100 calories in urban areas and 2400 calories in rural areas, as recommended long ago by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). Some of the notable features of this collection, inter alia, include: (1) The contribution of the Green Revolution, despite enabling India to escape from the demeaning “ship to mouth” existence under the PL-480 trappings could not sustain for long because of the absence of state support to improve research and technology, even though the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the largest institution of its kind anywhere in the world, is working under the Government of India. (2) Even scholars from the North-East treat that region as a terrorist infested forest area. In this collection, whenever food insecurity comes up for discussion, the North-East takes a major share. (3) The researchers have been treating the PDS in Kerala as the best of its kind in the country. Using the records available in the United Nations Organisation and the Programme Evaluation Organisation of the erstwhile Planning Commission, an essay incorporated in this collection shows that it is one of the worst PDS in India. (4) After India signed the Agreement on Agriculture under the WTO regime, several intellectuals and senior bureaucrats argued that the country would now become food surplus. Our analysis shows that, during the WTO era, India’s food insecurity and indebtedness exacerbated so that thousands of farmers started committing suicide as never before in its economic history. (5) India exported foodgrains at less than the BPL issue price at a time when a large number of poor in the country could not get subsidised foodgrains. Similarly, it imported foodgrains not when it had grain deficiency but when the WTO rules required so.

Dr. M. Raghavan did his Ph.D. from the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He joined the Indian Economic Service (IES) and occupied several responsible positions in the Ministries of Agriculture, Rural Development, Surface Transport, Finance, the ILO-Desk of the Ministry of Labour, Planning Commission, and the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP). His last assignment in government was as Director, CACP. After quitting the service, he returned to teaching career and taught Managerial Economics, Business Environment, and Statistical Methods to MBA students in the Institute of Technology, Cannanore University and KMCT School of Business, Calicut University. Before joining the IES, he was a lecturer in the post-graduate department of economics at the Zamorin Guruvayurappan College, Calicut. In 2010, he served as a member of the Research Review Committee constituted by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR). Several of his research papers were published in the Economic and Political Weekly, Social Scientist and The Hindu Business Line. From 2011 to 2015, he was engaged in the preparation of a monograph on famines in British Malabar based mainly on archaeological information. It has since been brought out with the title State Failure and Human Miseries.

• Prologue
• Acknowledgements

• Part I

• 1. Growth and Structural Changes in Indian Agriculture
• 2. Performance of Wheat Crop in India
• 3. Aspects of Growth and Distribution of Rice in India
• 4. Two Critiques on Investment in Agriculture
• 5. Terms of Trade between Agriculture and Non-Agriculture
• 6. Globalisation and Agriculture

• Part II

• 7. Politics of Procurement and Price Support
• 8. Changing Pattern of Input Use and Cost of Cultivation
• 9. Political Economy of Farm Price Fixation: A Historical Sketch

• Part III

• 10. Targeting the Poor, Or the Public Distribution System?
• 11. Anomalies of Restructuring the Public Distribution System
• 12. PDS in Kerala: From Excellence to Atrophy

• Part IV

• 13. Food Stocks: Managing Excess
• 14. Export Prospects of Foodgrains: A Sceptical Note
• 15. Wheat Imports: Food Security or Politics?
• Epilogue
• Notes
• References