India can surely abolish hunger with its strengths, and growth record. The UPA government?s intention to do so in the Presidential address is the right signal. If done well, this could be as powerful a progress engine as the NREG, which I have already called a social revolution. There are many experiments where this is being done immensely successfully, including the Akshya Patra.

Nutritious meals as a public private partnership could be tried. Gurudwaras and the great temples of the south do it all the time. At Dharmasthala, upto a lakh of people are fed with open kitchens in hygienic conditions by Virendra Heggade?s organisation. He also gives two bushels of rice to all those who work on growing and sustaining a tree in the ghats.

By the time I reached there, hungry famililies were making money from trees. Let?s study these and give environment & forests minister Jairam Ramesh, and the Rainfed Authority and NGOs, the food purchased from the market to unleash the wealth of Indian forests, commons and build the infrastructure to build a strong rural India. There are also many other areas of public endeavour where this can be easily done.

A larger programme of mid-day meals for retaining the girl child in school is one. A national programme for dietary supplements for poor lactating and pregnant mothers could be another. In Andhra Pradesh, Gopal has experimented with food advances so that workers build assets in NREG kind of programmes.

With all those workers who come more than, say, 60 days, in other words whose need is demonstrably high, this could be done. When they get food, they escape the hunger trap and have more and better time to work since food for many is a subsistence activity. There is so much to be done in rural India. Its abundant and hungry labour can be used very productively for sustainable activity

Selling cheap food is not so hot. The poorest also produce food. The poorest also work on farms which grow food. This is actually India?s largest private sector in terms of employment. It is particularly so for dalits, tribals and minority marginal farmers and workers. Also, more of them do it in the poorest areas where, by definition, other employment opportunities are not there. This is a solid fact and no amount of chicanery can avoid it.

There is global evidence to suggest that without taking account of this aspect, cheap grain actually hurts the poor. In an earlier piece, I had shown how this was a byproduct of India?s exceptionally good research tradition on policy work for poverty removal and there is no need to repeat that. I have always made a song and dance about cheap imports from countries which subsidise, say, wheat, pulses and oilseeds and sell them to India, ending up hurting the poorest regions of this country.

We spend thousand of crores in rainfed area programmes which is finally progressing now with another Singh friend?this time a scientist heading the authority. But the hand that feeds can also take away, for when you import three-quarters of your edible oil, naturally the oil millers want it with low tariffs and you take away thousands of crores of income from the poorest areas and families in the dry lands of India. Good policy requires that you don?t have conflicting measures working at the same time.

Honestly, this time around, we are not quibbling about the recommendations of an Alagh Committee Report being rejected. I have been at this game long enough to know that power interests are involved and that you win some and lose some. The larger interests involved this time are much too important to quibble with minor things.

In a hundred days let?s take the obviously useful steps and work out the best ways of supplying nutritious food to the poor. A guarantee programme could be designed, implemented and could follow, perhaps in a hundred and eighty days, in the mid-term review of the plan.

?The author is a former Union minister, and former vice-chancellor, JNU