Seven-point action plan drawn to eliminate hunger

Indian Science Congress enters the second day

The Government of India has chalked out an action plan in association with National Commission on Farmers to make India hunger-free by August 15, 2007.

The components of seven-point action plan are:

Restructuring the delivery of nutrition support programmes on a life cycle basis "" starting with pregnant women and extending up to old and infirm persons

Charting out a well planned programme for elimination of hidden hunger caused by deficiencies of micronutrients in the diet such as iron, zinc, iodine and vitamin B.

Establishing community food banks with the support of local self-help groups.

Ensuring availability of clean drinking water, environmental hygiene, primary healthcare and primary education.

Undertaking a nutrition literacy programme and providing every household an 'entitlements card,' indicating their entitlements to nutrition safety net programmes.

Enlarging and engendering the on-going, 'food for work' and employment guarantee programmes by including the case of women activities like provision of one day services for children.

Promoting home nutrition gardens designed to provide horticultural remedies to nutritional maladies, as well as dairy and livestock enterprises.

"As a single nation, we have the largest number of individuals who do not have economic access to balance diet and clean drinking water. This reputation is both unnecessary and inexcusable. We have the necessary technical, financial, managerial and political capacity to launch an integrated nutrition cum livelihood security system, which can help to achieve freedom from hunger by August 15, 2007," said M S Swaminathan, chairman, National Commission on Farmers, at the 92nd session of the Indian Science Congress here today.

He stressed on the importance of adding skills to those living in rural areas. "A paradigm shift for unskilled to skilled work is essential to add economic value to the time and labour of assetless," he pointed out.

"Ultimately, success in achieving a sustainable end to hunger will depend upon our ability to generate skilled off-farm livelihood and job opportunities for rural people who have no assets like land or livestock," he added.

"A hunger-free India should culminate in the introduction, on August 15, 2007, of a national food guarantee scheme which combines the features of the 'food for work' and employment guarantee schemes. The national food guarantee scheme should ensure that the poverty-induced-chronic-under-nutrition as well as micro-nutrient-deficiency-induced-malnutrition are eliminated," Swaminathan said.

"'A National Alliance for Mission 2007 - every village a knowledge centre' has been formed to mobilise the power of partnerships between the public, the private sector and academicians to take the benefits of information communication technology (ICT) to all the 60,000 villages of India by 2007," he said.