Directions : For Questions 31 to 45. Read the two passages given below carefully. Each passage is followed by questions based on the contents of the passage. Answer the questions by selecting the best alternative from among those given in the questions.

      India has come a long way since the Bengal Famine of 1943. The food situation in India, once characterised by chronic shortages and the spectre of famines, has changed dramatically over the years. From being the biggest recipient of PL 480 aid during the 1950s and 1960s, India today is relatively self-sufficient in foodgrains at the given level of incomes and prices; in fact, it has marginal surpluses. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) has been signed, with India as one of the signatories, under which all countries will have to gradually open up their agricultural sectors.

      It is, therefore, neigher feasible nor desirable to keep India’s foodgrains sector insulated from world markets. In fact, this is an appropriate opportunity for India to integrate its agriculture with global agriculture, and make use of private trade (both domestic and foreign) as an important instrument for efficiently allocating her resources as well as providing food security to her people at the lowest economic cost. The time to change gears in food policy has come.

      Food security, in a broader context, means that people have physical and economic access to food. Since foodgrains have the largest share in the food basket of the poor in a developing country like India, it is the availability of foodgrains that lies at the heart of the concept of food security. The first step in this direction, therefore, is to make foodgrains physically available to the people. This can be done by augmenting production, or through imports and transportation of grains to people wherever they are.

      There are several ways of achieving these targets. One may rely on private entrepreneurship by letting the individual farmers produce, traders trade/import and make it available to consumers far and wide; or the Government may directly intervene in the production and/or the trade process. In the former case, the Government follows policies that provide appropriate market signals while in the latter, it acts as producer, importer and trader itself. Indian policy makers have followed a mix of both these options. For production, they have relied on the farmers while the Government has retained control over imports. For distribution, it created public agencies to do the job along with private trade, thus creating a dual market structure.

Providing economic access to food is the second part of the concept of food security. This can be best obtained by adopting a cost effective technology in production so that the real price of foodgrains come down and more people have access to it. In case it still fails to reach the larger sections of the population, the Government can directly subsidise food for the poor, launch a drive to augment their incomes, or try a combination of the two strategies. India has followed both these policies.

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