Feeding India : the spatial parameters of food grain policy

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Bibliographic Information

Feeding India : the spatial parameters of food grain policy

Frédéric Landy

Manohar : Centre De Sciences Humaines, 2009

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [289]-303) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

With the support of numerous maps, this unique volume retells the spatial history of the Indian public food system: initially based on compulsory sales and imports, later graduating to agricultural support prices. From a restricted number of only urban beneficiaries in the beginning, to its spread to rural areas; from an import-dependent State to a self-sufficient cereal producing State. A system that played its part in the success of the Green Revolution by guaranteeing outlets for farmers, which showed the way to an improvement in the calorie intake of the population, but seldom that of the nutritional situation and had significant pernicious effects in terms of its ecological consequences. A system that also contained obvious geopolitical dimensions which made the integration of the four corners of the Indian Union possible within the same structure. The author argues that, if successive governments did not reduce the PDS enormous spatial coverage, it was partly because of a concept of territorial integration and aggregation, developed in equal measure by Hindu nationalism and Nehruvian thought. This book shall be of immense interest to scholars, students, decision makers and laymen readers interested in the history, geography and political economy of food policy and food issues.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • The Challenge of Food: Self-Sufficiency in Cereals, Continuing Food Insecurity
  • Heritage of Colonial Famines
  • The Hazards of Spatial Equality: Times of Hesitation (1943-1964)
  • Concentration Not Well Accepted (1964-1991)
  • Assessment Time - The Persistence of Inequalities, 1991-2007: Reconciling Economic Liberalization With State Control
  • Mixed Results
  • Liberalization, Wise Caution, or Confused Vacillation?
  • A National Territory to be Covered With a Grid: Planning the Territory of the Nation
  • A Foliated Territory & Multifold Identity Hindu Nationalist Territory
  • From Diamond-Shape to Cross a Comparison of Food Policies in South Asia
  • Conclusion
  • Bibliography
  • Index.

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