Global governance and India's food governance and security

Abstract

This chapter addresses the conundrum that India has one of the largest and longest running food aid programmes in the world, while it is also home to about a quarter of the world’s 815 million undernourished people. Household-level food insecurity exists widely alongside the overflowing grain stores, indicating the need for effective domestic food governance polices. With the country’s grain markets almost closed to international trade, along with a regime of food and agriculture subsidies, global food governance has had little impact on national food security. During international deliberations, citing food security concerns, India has strongly opposed the idea of fully freeing trade and eliminating food and agriculture subsidies. In the past two decades, however, this discussion has become more complex, due to factors such as changing climate, agriculture-related environmental degradation, increasing globalization of agricultural markets and associated international price volatility. Nevertheless, India continues to play a proactive role in agriculture trade discussions on international forums, such as the World Trade organization, as discussed in this chapter.