Key Points
New Delhi: Indias rural population has for long faced a decline in food and nutrition intake since the advent of neo-liberal policies in the early 1990s, says economist Utsa Patnaik, pointing out that at least 80 percent of rural Indians are having less than 2,200 calories per day...
But from whatever there is, through using certain approximations, I estimate that more than 80 percent of the rural population have slipped below 2,200 calories per day intake, said Patnaik at the Second P Sundarayya Memorial Lecture on the topic Agrarian Distress, Worker-Peasant Alliance and Resistance to Corporate and Imperialist Designs in India at HKS Surjeet Bhawan in New Delhi Wednesday...
Going in-depth into the agrarian crisis in India, Patnaik said that British colonial rule led to a nearly 2 centuries-long exploitation which left Indian peasants and workers in a state of severe poverty and physical degradation by the time of independence in 1947...
Rather than relying on brute force, Patnaik argued, the British used sophisticated economic measures to extract resources from India, taxing Indian peasants and artisans who produced textiles and crops for export...
She explained that under the World Trade Organizations (WTO) agricultural agreements signed by India and several countries, unfair terms have been forced through discrepancies in policies and trade rules.. The food security of their (developing countries) populations has been under tremendous attack for the last 20 years..
