Working people and their families all over our country are faced with the daunting task of ensuring that their children do not go hungry to bed, or suffer from malnutrition, because of lack of adequate and nutritious food. They are being forced to cut back on not only nutritious food, but other necessary expenses as well. This is the direct consequence of the skyrocketing increase in the cost of foodgrains, pulses, vegetables, milk, fruits, eggs, etc.
In May 2024, vegetable prices were 27.3% higher than a year earlier. Price of dals (lentils) was 17.14% higher. Cereals were 8.7% higher, eggs 7.6% and fruits 6.7 %.
Since May, over the past three months, prices of almost all food items have shot up even further. Vegetable prices in Delhi on 11 August, 2024 are shown below:
Table 1: Vegetable Prices in Delhi
(As on 11 August, 2024)
| Vegetable | Rupees per Kg |
| Onions | 40 |
| Potatoes | 40 |
| Tomatoes | 80 |
| Brinjal | 70 |
| Cabbage | 70 |
| Beans | 165 |
| Lauki | 32 |
| Bhindi | 95 |
Source https://www.oneindia.com/vegetables-price.html
The minimum wage for unskilled workers in Delhi is about Rs 18,000 a month, or about Rs 600 daily. The minimum wage in other urban centers and in rural areas is much lower than this. For instance, it is close to Rs. 10,000 in Kolkata and Lucknow. Even in Delhi, large number of workers earn much less than the minimum wage. With their meager earnings, working class families have to take care of food, house rent, clothing, health care, transport, electricity and water, fuel for cooking, and other necessities.
According to official estimates by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), the average monthly expenditure per person in urban areas was Rs. 6450 in 2022-23. About 40 percent of this, or Rs. 2580, was spent on food items. This implies that about Rs 86 per person, or Rs. 350 for a family of four, is spent daily on foodgrains, dals, cooking oil, masalas, vegetables, fruits, etc. This is the all-India average. About 65 percent of the population spend less than even this very low average!
In a publication brought out by the National Council of Medical Research and the National Institution of Nutrition in 2016[1], it was pointed out that per person per day consumption of vegetables and fruits in our country is extremely low. It is the cause of severe malnutrition as well as many diseases which lead to disabilities and early death. In 2016, adult males in urban areas consumed on average 173 grams of vegetables and 42 grams of fruits. The corresponding figures in rural areas were lower. Women, both in urban and rural areas, consumed less vegetables and fruits then men. The study pointed out that if the consumption of vegetables and fruits was increased to 500 gms a day per person, then the health of the majority of the population would greatly improve. It further pointed out that this could be achieved if workers in urban areas were able to spend Rs 22 more every day for each person in their family on vegetables and fruits. For a family of 4, this meant an additional expenditure of about Rs 88 per family per day, or Rs. 2640 per month.
The above mentioned study blamed lack of awareness among the working people as the source of the problem of malnutrition. It tried to cover up the truth that the vast majority of working families earn so little, and food prices have risen so high, that they cannot afford to spend enough on vegetables and fruits.
The wages and earnings of the majority of working people have lagged far behind the rapid rise in food prices in recent years. Every year, working people are able to buy less food than what they could in the previous year. The first items that goes out of the food basket are vegetables, fruits, dals and milk. Working people have to survive on food grains, potatoes and onions. With the prices of these items too rising relentlessly, working people have no choice but to survive on less than adequate food.
Source of the problem
In a fertile and vast country such as ours, it is possible with scientific planning to ensure that all varieties of crops are grown. It is possible to produce an abundance of foodgrains, pulses, milk, vegetables, fruits, poultry and meat in order to ensure that no one is deprived of nutritious food.
What is preventing this is the economic system and the state that defends this system.
The economic system is not oriented towards fulfilling the growing needs of the people. It is oriented towards maximizing the profits of the capitalist class through intensified exploitation of workers and outright robbery of the peasants.
The capitalist class looks at wages paid to workers merely as a cost of production, which it tries to minimize in order to maximise its profits.
Rising prices of food benefit capitalists who dominate trade in food. Such capitalists buy from the kisans at the lowest possible prices, hoard the produce, and then release it in the market at exorbitant prices. Such capitalists work in close coordination with the Central and state governments, to maximize their profits. They advise the governments as to when and how the government should intervene in the market.
Solution to the problem
It is not difficult to provide nutritious food for all.
The crucial issue is that providing for all must become the aim of the economy. The state must ensure that this aim is fulfilled.
We need to establish a Modern Public procurement system through which kisans are guaranteed that all agricultural produce — foodgrains, dals, vegetables, fruits, cooking oil, milk, meat etc — will be procured at prices remunerative to the kisan. The state must procure the agricultural produce, organize its efficient storage and transport in order to meet any shortfall in essential food items in any part of the country at any time. Together with such a Modern Public Procurement System, we must establish a modern universal public distribution system, through which we can ensure that all working peoples’ families, both in cities and in the countryside, are ensured food and other essential items at affordable prices. The domination of capitalists over trade in agricultural produce must be ended.
Such a system will benefit the whole of society. Only the interests of capitalists dominating agricultural trade will be hurt.
What is being proposed is something very feasible. However the present Indian state, established by the bourgeoisie as its instrument of rule over the working class and people, will never allow this to happen. No political party of the ruling class will allow it to happen. On the contrary, every political party of the ruling class will try to pit the working class and toiling peasantry against each other.
The working class, in alliance with the toiling peasantry, needs to establish its own rule, in place of the rule of the capitalist class. A workers’ and peasants’ state will ensure that the economy is oriented to fulfil the ever growing needs of the working people — not the drive of the capitalist class for maximum profits. It will ensure that the masses of people in towns and villages will have access to adequate nutritious food.