Narendra Modi is the Prime Minister of India, and he has made it his goal to create a hunger-free food India by 2022.
With more than 22 million Indians below the poverty line, it will be an uphill climb for Modi’s government to achieve its goal. And that is not even taking into account the country’s farmer crisis. In many parts of rural India, people still rely on farming for earnings and food, but there is no water left for them to irrigate rice crops, nor are there any jobs in Delhi or Mumbai that can support their families.
Without some urgent solutions in place soon, China could overtake us as one of the world’s leading economies before we manage to build a sustainable future around agriculture.
This is a bleak picture to be perched on.
But that’s where Modi’s dream of a hunger-free India can come into play: he’s announced that the country will start a large-scale government-sponsored famine relief program by the end of this year.
Being the largest free food program in the world
The Bharatiya Gram Swaraj Yojana (BGSSY), which is the largest government-organized food and nutritional program in the world, will provide more than 23 million people with enough food grains and pulses to ward off hunger for months.
BGSSY is the largest-and the only-government sponsored food program in the world. And it’s a massive one; it has grown rapidly under PM Modi’s rule and now reaches more than 70 per cent of the poor in rural India.
Modi wants India to follow China’s example, which has managed to eradicate hunger from its soil by providing public rice below market rates. In return, India wants to be a new provider of food security for 1 billion people.
It’s a vision that has been made possible through years of hard work, but there are still challenges ahead.
Some critics argue that the government is trying to win votes; some think that it’s a massive waste of taxpayers’ money. But it’s an ambitious idea, and even if we don’t come close to reaching our goal of reducing poverty, this program does hold the potential to at least alleviate poverty and hunger by delivering affordable food.
The program will be extended across every village in India by 2022, which is also when Modi hopes to have conquered world hunger.
India is already known as one of the most successful developing economies in the world; now they want to add eradicating poverty and hunger to their list of achievements too.
Food Costs
The experts at ICICI Securities Ltd., under the direction of Prasanna Anantha Subramanian, warned that if this program is continued, food grain stocks may be depleted by the following year.
One choice, they suggested, would be for the government to “take a leaf out of the central banks’ book and ‘taper’ the free food grains scheme.”
The choice of the program could also have an impact on inflation. The price of rice and wheat is going up, which is adding about 10% to retail inflation in India.
To conclude the ideas with leaving a thought
India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has announced a massive government-sponsored famine relief program. The BGSSY will provide 23 million people with enough food grains and pulses to ward off hunger for months. It is the largest government-organized food and nutritional program in the world.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants India to be a new provider of food security for 1 billion people. Some critics argue that the government is trying to win votes, but it’s an ambitious idea.
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