 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Professor Madhura Swaminathan and we'll be discussing what is the impact of the lockdown and particularly on the sections which were already at the margins and whether the recent financial package which is being touted as this great bonanza for the people doesn't really help the sections which are most affected by the lockdown. Madhura, good to have you with us but of course not on a very happy occasion. You have written about this lockdown and its impact and the kind of measures that you think should be taken. Now, coming to the first question that I have, what is the impact particularly on the sections which already have a bad record in terms of malnutrition, hunger and so on. We know that India has one of the highest stunting in the world amongst young children. So what do you think is the impact of this lockdown that has been there on them? Thank you, Praveen. I think it's very important to start with the fact that even before Covid, India has a record. We hold the world record for undernourished people. So in terms of children, in terms of adults, in terms of women, particularly pregnant women, various criteria which we take, whether it's anthropometric criteria like weight for age or body mass index or even absolute intake of calories and proteins. In fact, if you take average intake of calorie and protein before Covid, average Indian consume less than the recommended dietary allowance. So we started with a situation of very high levels of malnutrition and food security and there's no doubt that there's been a huge increase in the last two months. So we don't have any numbers to estimate the increase but I can give you the kind of numbers that people are talking about globally. For every one percentage decline in GDP, they're talking about a number. According to a study of wider, there will be, if there's 20% contraction in world GDP, there will be another 400 million poor people. So this is the kind of ratio between decline in GDP and increase in poverty. So we don't have the numbers for India because we don't know as yet how much is a decline in income. But I think it's visible to all of us that because of the lockdown for almost two months now, majority of Indians have lost their livelihoods and their incomes have collapsed to zero. So given that what we have in the packages announced so far by the central government is really minuscule or the pathetic is what I can say. Mathur, you were talking about the malnourishment in India, particularly among the younger population, zero to five years, children and so on. How do we compare in global terms? You said we have one of the worst records. In terms of the absolute number of malnourished, India has the world's highest number of malnourished children. But some say that may not be the correct comparison because we are a population of over 1.3, 1.4 billion. But even in terms of the proportion of children who are malnourished, India has numbers which are very similar to Sub-Saharan Africa. The latest number we have is for 2015-16, which suggests that 36% for more than one third of children below five are malnourished on the wait for age criterion. So while we claim to be one of the growing economies, we certainly have a far better per capita income than Sub-Saharan Africa. Our figures being low also then shows the sharpness of the divide in terms of poverty in this country. Absolutely. So even though there has been a slow decline in the incidence of poverty over the last sort of 10-15 years, our absolute measure of poverty is so low that it's not ensuring a nutritious diet even for those who are above, just above the poverty line. And I'd like to bring in one figure here that in 2017-18, the consumer expenditure survey data was not released, but there was a leak which suggested that in absolute value, the average consumption had come down from 2011. So I think before the COVID crisis hit us, we were in a situation of worsening income and poverty, worsening unemployment. And this has come as a sort of double burden on that situation. So already growing inequality, now a huge hit on their income. This is the way and the fact that at least 100 million migrant workers in the cities and towns, a lot of them going back. So you'll see a huge hit on their incomes and therefore on the poverty levels as well as nutritional levels. Absolutely. So one is that 90% or so of our workforce is in the informal sector and a very large majority of them are casual workers or workers in small self-employed businesses who have had zero income. Although the rural areas have not been as badly affected economically in the sense that agriculture has continued, agriculture, fisheries, daring, all these have been called essential activities. But our studies show that for the poor households in rural areas, particularly for manual worker households, almost 40 to 50% of their annual income comes from the migrant workers' income. So the gaps of the migrant worker income is affecting him or her in the city, but is also having immediate repercussion on the family in the village. So we talk about rural India being somehow protected from the virus as it were, but it has not been protected from the economic collapse. So that is very much going to affect not only the urban areas, but also the rural areas. Particularly now the migrant population going back, at least 40 million by reports are already either going back or on the way back. So this is going to make the things much worse. Coming back to what the government should or has not done. Let's look at this 20 lakh crore so-called stimulus that's been talked about. Others have said it's really not a stimulus. But thinking, okay, there is this amount of money which the government is saying it's going to spend. Is any of it already significant part of it going to the section which needs it most? You know, I've only read what others have estimated, but they're saying in real terms, if you take away all the loans and all the role of the RBI and the banks, probably the fiscal stimulus is at most 1% of GDP. Not 10% of the GDP. Not 10% but let's focus on what's going for food security. There are two components to that. One is the cash transfer or cash income because as I said, you don't just eat plain rice or plain chapatis. You need fuel, you need spices, you need to buy some things to go with it. So the collapse of the cash income among households has not been replaced. There's been a, you know, a piton of 500 rupees for those in Jandhan, Yojana and so on. So the amount of income transfer that is required is at least 5000 or 7000 rupees per month for a rural or urban poor household. In fact Sri Lanka has given 5000 Sri Lankans to about 5.5 billion households already. So other countries are doing it, even other developing countries. If we don't want to compare ourselves with the UK or the US or Europe, there has to be a cash transfer for 2-3 months till the economic activity returns. The second is the food component. Now India has a long and history and well established public distribution system. And I think that in a sense we have an opportunity, we have the network of ration shops more than, you know, something like 5 lakh ration shops in the country, network of dealers, network of storage points, food corporation of India go down. So we have this whole network ready which other countries may not have. This is the time to really say we are going to make food distribution universal and we are going to give adequate quantity and quality of food. So I think that's what needs to be done and has not been done. So when you talk about quality of food, not just quantity. You're really talking about not just rice or wheat and not just for instance dals, but also other supplementary foods or essential foods in that sense, like for instance protein intake, eggs, other things. Is that what you think we should add? Yeah, I'm referring to dals also because as I said the latest in data we had showed that the average Indian was consuming less than 60 gram of protein, which is the daily protein requirement. So even if we take half that protein requirement to be given, you require both pulses and eggs and milk and other products. So I think that what is easy to do to start with is to start distributing pulses, oil, salt, sugar, spices, etc. with the rations. And to add, maybe the easiest would be to add it through the school meals or through the school distribution system, add fruit, vegetables, milk and eggs. If we can give one cooked, I mean hot, nutritious meal to all the children, as well as open it out from that school center to the elderly, to pregnant women and others who are vulnerable. If we can give one balanced and nutritious meal, I think that will make a big difference and this is the time to start. Again, we have a network of, we have a school meal program which is near universal. It was closed down for the last two months and in many states as we know the quality of food given is poor. But I think that can be ramped up when you have a system already in place. Then using it becomes much easier. Scaling it up or using it much easier. So I think to start something new at this stage, people will say we are in a crisis and you want something new. But we have a ration network, we have a school meal and I see this network at every village level, at every ward level. So we can improve the quality of food being given there, I think relatively easy. Kerala has continued to supply meals to the school children and reaching their homes to get the school children the meals which they were supposed to get in the schools. So has any other government taken such measures? As of now, I don't think so because the argument that has been used by most governments is of distancing. What they call social distancing but what I think we should call physical distancing. Again, I think that we are now two months down and the lockdown is being relaxed. So when we are talking today, I think people are queuing up for bus tickets, people are queuing up for rations. To have a queue to collect food in a village school or in a ward school, in a public school is something that can be done with appropriate water for hand washing and so on. So I think that this should be started immediately by all state governments. I want to add that the state governments, Kerala is doing a remarkable job but Kerala as much as any other state government is hugely short of resources now. So the central government has to take the responsibility in terms of funding this better quality of food or in terms of funding. That was really my next question that given the fact that the states do not have the resources that this would really demand particularly if you want a school based nutrition program. It would really need transfer to the center, Exchequer, which at the moment not only it's not forthcoming but even what the states are supposed to get is not coming to them. So we really have a double hit on the states. So what is the kind of transfer, scale of transfers we are talking about in this case with the center should do the states. So let me just go back a minute that even at the peak of our distribution through the Russian system, the food subsidy of the government of India has never exceeded 1% of GDP. Now we're all talking about this package being 1% but just think of it. We are talking about reaching 800 to 900 million people. If we say that we're taking two thirds of our population as a severely food insecure to reach 900 million or a billion. How is 1% of GDP adequate? So I mean, is this what we allocate for 80% of our population? We give them only 1% of our GDP. So I think that even if we can and remember that when we are procuring fruit and vegetable, one of the worst hit agriculture is right now. The horticulture and fisheries and so on who's going to perishable products who have not been able to store it where the system of minimum support price doesn't exist. So if we procure fruit, vegetable, milk and so on and distribute it at a subsidized rate through schools, we're actually also supporting the economy and it's coming back. So the subsidy, I say I have not done the calculation, but I think if we add another 1% of GDP. So we said 2% of GDP for food security. I think that would be quite a substantive sum of money to ensure this. And what it will do is really put cash in the hands of the people who are the growers. So in that sense, it will be a double benefit economically. Absolutely. The meat industry, I know Kerala has even given fish and meat as part of some of their school meals. So that's very desirable, but at least eggs, which is a little easier to transport and so on. So I think that the meat industry is in a doldrum, old trees in a very bad shape. So this could actually become part of the revival of these industries. But as you know, the Hindutva lobby, particularly in this country is also part of the understanding, has an understanding that vegetarianism is Hinduism while other, if we're a non-vegetarian, it's somehow being anti-Hindu, if not anti-national. So we have that problem as well in the country. And there's also been a scare because of this zoonotic disease. People think there has been a scaremongering about consumption. But I think the protein deficiency in India is, of course, one part of it is because there is so little animal protein in the diets of people and that's because they can't afford it. They can only afford meat or fish or mutton or something once a month or once a year. So this is a time when we could see this as a way of actually improving, not just controlling the deterioration that is happening, but improving the nutrition of large masses. And one point I want to make here is that for children, particularly young children, even two months of a poor diet is something that's going to have a long-term effect on their health, on chronic diseases, on their cognitive development. So we really have to address this very quickly. You've written about the crisis in the UK during the war and the rationing the dead, adding proteins to it. And actually their health figures improved during the war in spite of all the deprivations that supposedly they faced. That's right, life expectancy for males, that two who were being killed in the war, and the mortality, life expectancy increase and mortality decrease was most rapid in the 1940s. If you take the whole 1900 to 1950 period in the UK, and this is because of equal distribution. A more equitable distribution. Yeah, equitable distribution. And I think if you look at the quantity of food and vegetable India is producing, if you look at the stocks of food grain, we have the quantity. So basically we have the ability in terms of production. It is just the distribution and the support the government needs to do, which is lacking. And the fact that even under the conditions of crisis, we are not thinking in this direction at all. And that's what is really, what shall we say, the crisis of our conscience in this particular case. World over now, there are a lot of estimates coming out that poverty is going to increase, food insecurity is going to increase, all the global organizations have already indicated that. And I think if we don't do something, I think it will be unconscionable that we are going to have a major increase, a worsening of nutrition and food security in this country after a slow but steady improvement. So I think that not that we have much to talk about, we were in a bad situation, but I think this is going to be a major, as you said, unconscionable reversal. Thank you very much, Mandura, for being with us. We'll be in touch on this and other issues. 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