FOOD SECURITY CHALLEGES IN INDIA

Food security is access to enough food by all people at all time for an active and healthy life. The definition as per the Rome declaration is “food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for all active and healthy life. India is developing now and its income, infrastructure, per capita income as also develop. But the major problem faced by India is “the problem of food and its distribution”. In India Agriculture is very important, employing 50% of its population and providing 16.5% of its annual GDP. India is largest and second largest producer of food crops like rice wheat. But India is not able to achieve the food security aim. According to recently released Global Hunger Index of 2018 India ranked 103 out of 119 countries. The Indian Government developed programmes to achieve food security goals but, India is not in the condition to meet the basic food requirements of people. There are many people’s in urban and rural areas of India who strive hard even for the square meals. This paper is focused on the food security issues in the Indian scenario. It also covered the various development programmes taken up by the Indian Government to counter various food security issues including several schemes.