Member profile
Shewli Kumar
Organization:
Tata Institute of Social Sciences
Country:
India
I am working on:
Gender and development issues and child rights. I teach at the University.
Shewli Kumar
To respond to each of the questions I would need to reframe the way we look at nutrition within present situation in India. Land as a resource for the poor, forest dwellers and excluded communities like Dalits need to be reassured and redistributed within the rights framework. The current high levels of malnutrition is an outcome of denial of land and forest rights, which are guaranteed by law, yet not given in practice, lack of attention to sustainable agriculture and multi-cropping practices within traditional agricultural practices.
In India the hard fought negotiations to ensure adequate food to the poor has been ensured under the National Food Security Act, however there are a multiplicity of programmes for health care and a closer look at them show less of rights and more of charity through inclusion of private players in public health processes. Hence, making right to adequate health care as a public good and right of all citizens is a must. The discourse from charity to rights is imperative for such basic services and I am not sure if the Social Protection floors ensure the same. It’s like taking away from one hand and giving in charity from another with a patronizing and top-down approach.
Several laws like the SEZ Act in India take away fertile land from farmers and of course the landless workers on farms are not counted at all. So more farmers are being diverted from land in a quiet and insidious manner. Since the government may not provide adequate support prices for the agricultural produce more farmers especially young farmers are selling land as its not profitable for them. Hence crop insurance, insurance against climatic changes and disasters need to be urgently introduced through state funded and monitored programmes. The private insurance companies are not covered under accountability mechanisms hence often they resort to devious tactics for return of loans etc.
Two critical programmes for nutrition are the Integrated Child Development Scheme (universal in nature) and the Mid-day meal scheme. Both have shown good possibilities for dealing with nutrition delivery. However there has been strong budget cuts in both schemes in the new budget. And the monitoring and accountability mechanisms are weak in several parts of the country. Also the catch in most of these schemes is the dependence on delivery on resource poor, gender discriminated women from the local communities who receive a pittance with regard to their salaries and honorariums. All evaluations tend to focus on their roles instead of locating power hierarchies where salaries are higher for those who work the least within the system.
Critical to ensuring nutrition of communities and people is the adoption of a rights-based approach wherein they are empowered with resources through land, livelihoods and social security, which means that countries work towards a 'development with equity' rather than 'growth as development.'