Admitting this in the Rajya Sabha today during the Question Hour, Minister for Agriculture Sharad Pawar said the Planning Commission does not have official statistics on the number of the people who were facing starvation.
He, however, said the International Food Policy Reasearch Institute(IFRI) in its October, 2008 Report had stated that there were more than 200 million people in the country who are ”food insecure”.
”I admit that there are sizeable sections of the population who cannot purchase food despite its availability,” he said.
The Minister faced sharp attacks of the opposition Members over the lack of official data on starvation. They said the term”food insecure” was just euphemism for describing the people who were starving.
Ms Brinda Karat of the CPI(M) wanted the Government to give its definition of the poor and vulnerable. She said that according to the Arjun Sengupta Report, there was a large chunk of population earning less than Rs 20 a day but it was not included in the Below Poverty Line(BPL) category.
She wanted to know when the Government would bring them under BPL category.
The Minister said if the food production increased, the benefit of BPL would be extended to greater number of people.
He claimed that the Centre was making adequate allocation to states, and it was their job to distribute it to their population.
Mr Pawar said the Government was trying to solve the problem of food availability by dual approach–giving better prices to farmers and substantial subsidies to the targeted population.