Pandemic was the Second Crisis, Hunger was the First

India stands to be the second highest affected country by Covid-19, leading after the United States. While the pandemic was, and continues to be a critical threat globally, for many in India and various other countries, the more immediate threat is hunger and starvation that is intensified due to the badly hit food supply chain, especially in India during the pandemic and lockdown period.

India has the world's largest food aid program, which is the ration card system, and the government warehouses are stocked with over 15 percent of the global food aid, and yet millions of people die of hunger in India every year because of their inability to access that food aid due to not having a government issued ration card. Since all the activities were shut during the lockdown, the issuance of ration cards was also at halt. However, lockdown is just the present excuse, millions of people face bureaucratic difficulties in getting their ration cards made because the root of the problem is that the ration card system is heavily underfunded as the current budget is based off of the 2011-12 data census when the country's population was 1.2 billion, and it has now reached a figure of 1.38 billion, thus creating a quota gap of roughly 100 million people. This means that the number of applications for ration cards is more than the quotas allocated.

While the government took measures to mitigate the covid-19 hunger crisis like allocating more ration, or providing it for free to the millions of people who are covered in the ration card program, the hidden problem lies in the reality of the millions of people who haven't been granted access to the ration card system and are left in a limbo, waiting.

There have been serious consequences of the population gap that the ration card budget fails to fix. This goes to show that the reality is not just about accessibility, and the problem in our country is the access to accessibility, and in between this cycle, millions of people lose their lives and have lost their lives during the pandemic- lives that could be saved by one piece of plastic card that ensured them food for their survival. India is one of the biggest food producers of the world, and simultaneously also stands to have the largest population of hungry people in the world. The country ranks 102 out of 117 nations in the Global Hunger Index.

In India, 40 percent of the fruits and vegetables, and 30 percent of the cereals never really reach the consumers due to ineffective supply chain management each year. 7000 people die everyday of hunger in India alone.

Image source- The Indian Express