India will be facing food shortage in the coming years. It will become extremely difficult for India to sustain around 17% of world population (and still rising) on 2.4% of the world’s land area.
Agricultural in India is not a profitable sector and peasants are either shifting their profession from being a farmer or committing suicide.
The majority of farmers in India unlike in the West have very small areas of land with the primitive style of farming activities. The per capita production is also very low and most of the farmers live in very poor conditions.
Farmers are committing suicide in India as they can’t live a self-sufficient life and mostly live under a huge debt for years with just enough money to survive.
As per official statistics, 8,263 farmers have committed suicide in just seven states (Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Gujarat) between 2003 and March 2007”.
In fact, over a quarter million Indian farmers have already committed suicide since 1995. The largest of recorded suicides in human history has occurred in India in the past 16 years.
So obviously food price would be kept on rising in the coming years in India and the total yield in the agriculture area will also come down.
In India, around 6000 kids die every day (2 million kids a year) just because of hunger.
India is heading towards serious food shortage and food prices will certainly be rising, considering the fact that yield per hectare is not increasing but population explosion is continuous.
This food shortage and increase in food prices will further add to increasing inflation in India or at least keep the inflation figure high. High inflation figure will eventually bring down the economic growth.
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About the author:
Subodh Gupta is the author of the book “Doing Business in India and Understanding Pitfalls”, the only book which highlights business challenges in India.