On 4 December 2002, India's finance minister, Jaswant Singh, presented his government's mid-term review in parliament, emphasising a need to boost private investment in agriculture to thereby encourage commodity exports. What he forgot to mention was that by taking this path India had decided to follow Argentina's model of economic growth, which in reality expands the profits of a few agribusiness enterprises at the cost of growing hunger, malnutrition and poverty.
Argentina, the world's fourth largest exporter of food, faces an unprecedented socio-economic crisis. As the vast, fertile country continues to increase exports of meat, wheat, corn and soya, a catastrophe has hit the underprivileged in the countryside. Hunger multiplies and images of stunted, emaciated children scandalise Argentines, whose country was long known as the grain store of the world.
Hunger also continues to grow in India, which has one-third of the world's estimated 860 million people who go to bed hungry, and that too in times of plenty. In fact, hunger and poverty have proved to be robustly sustainable. Amidst reports of gnawing hunger and starvation deaths in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa, India continues to make room for exporting surplus foodgrain. That an estimated 320 million people desperately need food despite the more than 60 million tonnes stocked in the open has failed to evoke any kind of political response.
Once perceived by neo-classical pundits as representing a glorious model of economic growth, an unprecedented humanitarian crisis now confronts Argentina. In India too, with the increased domination of market forces in the food sector, and reduced public policy intervention for food security, food prices have increased to impact on the mass population. Meanwhile, Jaswant Singh has promised to further cut subsidies and reduce the government's intervention in foodgrain procurement.