More than 45 years after Green Revolution began; India provides a unique spectre of overflowing godowns and rotting grains on the one hand while millions go to bed hungry. Having the largest population of hungry in the world, India ranks 66 among 105 countries in the 2012 Global Hunger Index. That too at a time when there is no shortage of food within the country. Recent record on the food grain stock in the country shows that the government of India is pilling up one of the world’s largest stockpiles of food grains amounting to around 667 lakh tonnes, as of January 2013. This is much higher than the government's rule of stocking up buffer stock of 250 lakh tonnes which must be maintained in a year.

To ensure that no starvation death takes place and people are saved from malnutrition as far as possible, the Supreme Court directed the centre to release five million tons of food grains immediately for distribution in 150 most poverty-stricken districts or other poorer segments in the country. The entire food production and distribution system therefore needs an urgent overhaul. If only the government was to focus on agricultural production, procurement and distribution in a decentralized manner, much of the agrarian crisis would disappear.

There is a need is to take the following steps to address this paradox -

Institutional Set up 

1. Set up a wide network of mandis and temporary purchase centers across Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha, Assam and the other northeastern states. Extending the Green Revolution to northeast has already increases rice production, but farmers are resorting to distress sale getting about 20 to 30 per cent less because of the absence of procurement centers. Thus mandis will cater to their problems where they will get optimum price for their produce.
2. Invest in setting up a network of grain silos, warehouses and godowns across 50 places spread throughout the country. The public-private partnership model to improve storage facilities is a promising solution
3. Thrust on food processing industries thereby setting food processing centres across the country.

Policies and legislations

• Strengthening PDS- The public distribution system should be strengthened and should be designed to reach the unreached.
• Bringing food security bill based on right based approach - effective bill on food and nutrition security, address the issue of rotting food grains -- a criminal waste when people still die of starvation-- and rely on bottom-up methods that complement the top-down administrative structure to identify the poor and reduce both exclusion and inclusion errors in targeting
• Removing barrier to interstate trade
• Longer term policies of restoring purchasing power need to be started on an urgent basis, and the stepping up of food-for-work programmes to cover every state whether drought affected or not, is the obvious answer.
•  Decentralised procurement and decentralised storage will help to minimise transport and transaction costs.. The storage can be done through a national grid of Community Food Banks (CFBs) managed by self-help groups

A universal and user-sensitive Public Distribution System, Food Guarantee Scheme, Community Food Banks and various other food entitlement projects need to be implemented in an integrated manner, so that the goal of hunger-free India can be achieved