Realizing the right to food and nutrition through public and private action: Two commentaries on Drèze's/Sen's book Hunger and Public Action in the context of food and nutrition rights

Abstract

Published over half a decade ago, Drèze's and Sen's book [Drèze, J. and Sen, A. (1989) Hunger and Public Action, Clarendon Press, Oxford] is a continuing source of ‘food for thought’ pertinent to the current debate on people's ‘entitlements’, akin to legal ownership rights thinking, and the authors' discussion of the nature of ‘public action’ is a lucid reminder that - at a time of diminishing government roles - the issue of responsibility for hunger elimination goes well beyond the current, narrowly polarized debate on ‘state versus the private sector’ action. Section 1 examines the authors' concepts, premises and findings in the context of today's human rights debate. It calls for strengthening, instead of weakening governments, to do what they can — or should be able to — do best, and emphasizes the importance of strengthening legal rights beyond improving the economic policy environment in order to ensure that people's entitlements are not subject to the whims of the policies of the present day and that the indivisibility of political and civil rights and economic, social and cultural rights is adhered to. In describing Bangladesh's Grameen Bank experience, Section 2 provides a ‘grassroots’ illustration of the true meaning of ‘public action’ and of the evidence generated by the poor as most effective users of resources, which is shaking the foundations of development thinking. In the authors' spirit, both commentators call for strengthening civil society and for fostering cooperation between state, private enterprise, NGOs and civil society at large.