Hidden hunger, caused by the deficiency of micronutrients such as iron, iodine, zinc, vitamin A and vitamin B12, is a serious nutritional problem in India. Iron deficiency in pregnant women leads to anaemia in children, which is characterized by LBW. In our strategy for food and nutrition security, it is important that we pay attention not only to protein and energy under-nutrition, but also to overcoming micro-nutrient deficiencies in the diet. Both horticulture and aquaculture can play an important role in overcoming hidden hunger. The Fish for All Research and Training Centre at Poompuhar in Tamil Nadu was set up for the purpose of imparting training to fishermen and women in all aspects of fisheries ranging from capture or culture to consumption, based on the pedagogic methodology of learning by doing. Aquaculture involves the artificial rearing of fish in ponds using a mixture of fish species like cutla, rohu and mrigal. Capture fisheries involves fishing in rivers, reservoirs, oceans, etc. Fishes in culinary use can be either from marine water or fresh water, using either modern vessels or traditional small boats.

Several threats to fisheries have occurred in different parts of the world. A grave danger is the ocean pollution caused by oil spills, the most serious of which occurred in recent years in the Gulf of Mexico. We also experienced such an oil spill near Mumbai as a result of collision between two ships. This emphasizes the need for more intensive research on bioremediation so that micro-organisms capable of removing oil can be developed and deployed.

How can India develop an aquaculture strategy that can ensure regular supply of fish at affordable prices, for all those who eat fish? Globally and nationally, fisheries and aquaculture contribute significantly to food and nutrition security. About 20 per cent per capita intake of animal protein for more than 2.8 billion people is from fish and for over 400 million people, fish meets 50 per cent of the requirement for animal protein and minerals. Malnutrition is still the number one killer compared to other diseases and fish with its affordable protein and essential nutrients scores over other forms of animal protein. It is a rich source of micro-nutrients, minerals, essential fatty acids and proteins and is valuable for pregnant mothers and in child health and development.

Sir Asutosh Mookerjee in his Presidential Address to the First Indian Science Congress in 1914 made the following remarks:

It is apt to remember these words in the context of the new paradigm in our science, technology and innovation (STI) enterprise, viz., ‘science, technology and innovation for the people’, introduced in the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy 2013 released by the Prime Minister of India during the Centenary Session of the Indian Science Congress. The STI Policy also calls for positioning India among the top five global scientific powers by 2020.

Since the new STI paradigm calls for attending to the needs of the people, it may be worthwhile to keep in mind that India's unenviable position today in various global indicators related to human development and nutrition is the following:

1. • malnourished children under 5 – above 40 per cent;

2. • low birth weight children – 21 per cent;

3. • undernourished people – about 217 million;

4. • sixty-fifth position among 79 countries in Global Hunger Index 2012;

5. • one hundred and thirty-fourth position among 187 countries in UNDP's Human Development Report 2012; and

6. • very low position in the nutrition barometer.

It is obvious that we have to redouble our efforts in harnessing science for meeting the needs of our people in food and nutrition, water, sanitation, education, healthcare, shelter and energy.

2013 marks the seventieth anniversary of the Bengal Famine when about 2 million children, women and men died of hunger. It also marks the determination of our country to confer on our people the Right to Food. Thus, India, which has over 18 per cent of the world population and which was described in the early 1960s as a country destined to lead ‘a ship-to-mouth’ existence, has embarked upon conferring the legal right to food to all needing social protection against hunger. The right to food is to be implemented with home-grown food. Already, Chhattisgarh has enacted a Food Security Act ensuring economic access to food to over 90 per cent of its population.

The Union Budget for 2013–14 presented by P. Chidambaram was remarkable in placing faces before figures in preparation of budget proposals. Chidambaram's speech, throughout, emphasized the need to care for women and children, the youth and the poor. Thus, his budget will be remembered not only for its strategies to stimulate economic growth and control fiscal deficit, but also for the importance given to the needs of the economically and socially underprivileged sections of society. The approach to the poor was not one of charity and patronage, but one of skill and knowledge empowerment and asset building.

In the field of agriculture, Chidambaram adopted a three-pronged strategy. First, for defending the gains already made in the original Green Revolution areas like Punjab and Haryana, he proposed crop diversification in a manner that both farm ecology and farm economics could be safeguarded. It is well- known that in this region, which is the heartland of the Green Revolution, the water table is going down and the soil is getting salinized. The Budget provided 500 crore to start the programme of crop diversification. I hope this will be used by the state governments concerned to introduce ecologically desirable rotations, like cereal-legume rotation.

Second, extending the gains to new areas, Chidambaram provided 1,000 crore for expanding the yield revolution to eastern India, particularly in states like Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, where already the schemes introduced by his predecessor Pranab Mukherjee are making their impact felt.

Third, in order to make new gains, Chidambaram provided 200 crore to start on a pilot scale, a major initiative for marrying nutrition and agriculture by establishing nutri-farms. Nearly 60 per cent of consumers are also farmers. The widespread malnutrition prevailing in India can be overcome only if farm families are enabled to have a balanced diet. Organizing nutri-farms will involve introducing in the cropping system bio-fortified crops which are rich in iron, zinc, vitamin A, vitamin B12 and other micronutrients as well as those which are rich in protein like quality protein maize. The programme will be taken up in the districts that are suffering from a high burden of hidden hunger caused by micro-nutrient deficiencies.

In the area of technology development, funds were provided for a National Institute of Biotic Stress Management at Raipur, Chhattisgarh, and for a Centre of Excellence in Agricultural Biotechnology at Ranchi, Jharkhand.

2013 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the commencement of a yield revolution in wheat in India, caused by a modification in plant architecture and physiological rhythm. The wheat revolution represented a significant landmark in India's agricultural history. Its genesis and growth have been analysed earlier. Here, the steps that led to the wheat revolution in India have been briefly summarized.

The Bengal Famine (1942–43) provided the backdrop to India's independence. The average yields were below 1t/ha in wheat and rice. As a result of the tall and thin straw, the then cultivated varieties were not responding well to fertilizers or irrigation. Dr K. Ramaiah, the first Director of the Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI), Cuttack, proposed that one should transfer genes for fertilizer response from japonica to indica rice varieties. This was the beginning of the breeding of high-yielding varieties, which subsequently led to ‘the Green Revolution’. I worked at CRRI on the indica-japonica hybridization programme for sometime in 1954, before joining the Botany Division (later named by me as the Genetics Division) of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi. Dr B. P. Pal, Director of IARI and an eminent wheat breeder, agreed to my desire to work on semi-dwarf and fertilizer-responsive varieties of wheat using multiple research strategies, including radiation-induced erectoides mutants, on the lines of the work done by Professor A. Gustafsson in Sweden on developing the erectoides mutants of barley. Dr Pal warmly supported the proposal and mentioned that breeding wheat varieties, which can respond to fertilizer application was the need of the hour. Unfortunately, all the semi-dwarf strains the author produced by different approaches had also reduced panicle size and hence a lower yield potential.

In 1955, I learnt from Dr H. Kihara, the famous Japanese wheat scientist, that Dr Gonziro Inazuka of the Norin Experiment Station had semi-dwarf varieties with long panicles (i.e., without any pleiotropic effect) and that these were being used by Dr Orville Vogel in Pullman, Washington State, USA, in his winter wheat breeding programme. I wrote to Dr Vogel and he was kind enough to send seeds of the semi-dwarf variety Gaines. He, however, also wrote that being a winter wheat, Gaines may not flower in Delhi. He, therefore, suggested that I approach Dr Norman Borlaug in Mexico who had incorporated the same dwarfing genes in a spring wheat background.

The concept of ‘Food Security Floor’ was proposed by the HLPE, which provides scientific advice to the CFS of the UN. I am the current chairman of HLPE and our proposal is the adoption of a bottom-line approach in public policies related to achieving the goal of sustainable food security for all in every country. The food security floor will indicate the minimum steps needed for ensuring that every child, woman and man will have an opportunity for a healthy and productive life through access to balanced diet, clean drinking water, sanitation and primary healthcare. The need for effective steps to overcome the widespread malnutrition prevailing in India will be obvious from the position it is occupying now in the world in terms of the per cent of population affected by chronic and hidden hunger.

According to the National Family Health Survey (2005–06), the percentage of malnourished children under five years is over 40. The children born with LBW are above 21 per cent. Nearly 80 per cent of children and 50 per cent of women are anaemic due to hidden hunger. The Planning Commission has estimated that about 217 million of India's population goes to bed hungry. We occupy the one hundred and thirty-fourth position out of 187 countries in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Index 2012. The Global Hunger Index of the IFPRI has placed us in the sixty-fifth position among 79 countries studied. The nutrition barometer (2012) published by Save the Children, indicates that we occupy a very low position in terms of political and financial commitment to the eradication of hunger. A recent report also points out that the number of babies fed with mothers’ milk up to six months age are relatively low in India. The State of Food Insecurity in the World Report 2012 published by the FAO, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) emphasizes that while economic growth is necessary, it alone is not sufficient to accelerate reduction in hunger and malnutrition. Therefore, a direct attack on hunger is essential. A recent report of the Working Group on Nutrition for the Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012–17) mentions that maternal and child under-nutrition levels remain persistently and unacceptably high.

Food losses and waste have recently been given very high visibility, since the FAO estimates that about 1.3 billion tonnes or a third of all food produced are lost (Gustavsson et al., 2011). Recent reports (Foresight, 2011; Gustavsson et al., 2011) have highlighted the need to reduce them globally to improve food security (HLPE, 2011; FAO, 2012a, b) and to reduce the environmental impact of food systems (FAO, 2012a, b; HLPE, 2012; UNEP 2012a, b). An amount of 1.3 billion tonnes of wasted food can help meet the food needs of over 3 billion people. FAO launched the Save Food Initiative in 2011 to accelerate progress in ending avoidable waste. Food losses and waste were much talked about during the preparation for the Rio+20 Conference (FAO, 2012a, b), which linked the reduction of food losses and waste to the issue of more sustainable food systems and security.

The Zero Hunger challenge launched in 2012 by the Secretary General of the United Nations during the Rio Conference integrates a zero food loss and waste challenge and a 100 per cent sustainable food systems challenge. The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) has requested its High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) for Food Security and Nutrition, which I have the privilege to chair, to prepare, for 2014, a report on food losses and waste in the context of sustainable food systems.

For those who are working for a long time on food security issues, the need for eliminating food losses and waste is an old topic. Why then is there such widespread interest now?

I think there are many reasons for this. The first is probably that with the food price crisis in 2008 the whole world has realized that there are still almost a billion hungry people and 2 billion malnourished people, many of them being pregnant women. Maternal and foetal under-nutrition lead to newborn children having LBW and such children suffer from several handicaps in later life, including impaired cognitive ability.

With the onset of the era of climate change, there are concerns regarding India's capacity to sustain a growing demand for food, driven by population and income growth and by a shift towards diets richer in animal products. FAO estimates that food production will have to increase by 60 per cent towards 2050 to satisfy the growing demand (Alexandratos and Bruinsma, 2012).

Our country is going through a difficult period when the ground rules for the behaviour of every citizen are being violated. There is unfortunately a trend to make profit out of poverty and move away from the concept that the means of achieving a goal are as important as the desired end. The word ‘accountability’ is fast disappearing from our dictionary. Green Revolution is getting replaced by greed revolution. Sri Aurobindo once remarked: ‘India has become the symbolic representation of all the difficulties of modern mankind. India will be the land of its resurrection – the resurrection to a higher and truer life.’ For achieving this goal of resurrection, it is important to promote the culture of compassion and honesty. Today, there are reports of widespread corruption in all major developmental activities and unfortunately also, in programmes designed to assist the poor. This is particularly serious with reference to the utilization of natural resources like cyberspace, coal, iron ore and other minerals, land, energy and water. The feeling that one should bribe for achieving his/her goal is becoming an unfortunate part of our ethos. This is the negation of the qualities on which Gandhiji laid so much emphasis, namely, truth, ahimsa and self-discipline.

I would like to congratulate the Government of Tamil Nadu for preparing a vision for 2023. Without vision, people perish. This vision envisages that by 2023 Tamil Nadu should become India's most prosperous and progressive state with no poverty, and where its people enjoy all the basic services of a modern society and live in harmonious engagement with the environment and with the rest of the world. However, vision represents only a desirable goal. To convert the vision into action and achievement, we will need synergy among professional skill, political will and people's participation.

One of the stated goals of the 2023 vision is ‘Tamil Nadu will preserve and care for its ecology and heritage’. Much has already been done, but there is scope for concerted action in the following areas: genetic resources and food security, living aquatic resources and food security, and safeguarding food security in an era of climate change and sea level rise. There is also great progress in the development of new technologies, particularly with reference to information communication technology, biotechnology and nanotechnology. These are powerful scientific tools and should be used only with public good in mind.

Social protection has seen sharp focus in the development policy agenda during the past decade. There is also a clear trend for making social protection, as well as food security, ‘rights-based’ rather than ‘discretionary’. Yet, no clear consensus has so far emerged concerning many basic design choices and implementation modalities.

In the past, social protection started with the family, where an economically or physically disabled member used to be taken care of by other family members. Gradually, the joint family system gave way to small families, mainly comprising the husband and wife. The absence of effective social protection measures at the family and community levels is one of the causes of suicides among farmers that we observe in Vidarbha and elsewhere. Now that government is assuming responsibility for performing the duties that families and local communities used to undertake in the past, it is important to ensure that the social protection measures initiated by the government do not erode human dignity. Bread with dignity should be the motto for the social protection measures undertaken with public funds.

To be inclusive, social protection should begin with farm families on whom the responsibility for producing adequate quantities of food-grains rest. To be effective, such social protection measures for farmers could take the form of a ‘panchsheel’ for them. The five components of such a package are: soil healthcare, water harvesting and efficient use, technology and inputs, credit and insurance, including old-age pension for farm women and men, and assured and remunerative marketing opportunities. A social protection umbrella based on the panchsheel principle will help rescue small and marginal farmers from poverty and hunger traps.

Access to food, irrespective of economic status is the major goal of the Food Security Act 2011. Unfortunately, all the discussions surrounding this law relate to eligibility criteria. Targeting aims to prevent the diversion of food-grains to those who can afford to purchase them at market price. India is a vast country with diverse experiences. For example, Tamil Nadu operates a universal PDS without any major implementation difficulty. Obviously a universal PDS will be successful only if it is based on the foundation of a culture of honesty. It may be useful to introduce a universal PDS in the 200 high-burden districts that suffer from severe malnutrition, as identified by the Prime Minister's Nutrition Advisory Council.

Mr Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the UN, launched the Zero Hunger Challenge at the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development held in Brazil in June 2012. At a high level consultation held in Madrid in April 2013, it was agreed that the global community should commit to a common vision that hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition should be ended by 2025. At these meetings, governments were requested to pay concurrent attention to the following five pillars of the Zero Hunger Challenge:

1. • 100 per cent access to adequate food all year round;

2. • zero stunted children less than two years of age;

3. • all food systems made sustainable;

4. • 100 per cent increase in smallholder productivity and income; and

5. • zero loss or waste of food.

Each one of these pillars is relevant to the rice-growing regions of Asia. Taking food losses and food waste alone, it has been estimated that one-third of food production is lost or wasted globally, i.e., about 1.3 billion tonnes per year. In India, 100 per cent access to adequate food all year round can be achieved if the legal entitlements under the National Food Security Act reach those needing social protection against hunger. In spite of all the technological progress made, FAO estimates that 531 million people still suffer from chronic hunger in the Asia-Pacific region. This implies that about two-thirds of those who are hungry live in India. In addition, 100 million children under the age of 5 (or 28 per cent of the world total) were stunted in 2010 in the Asia-Pacific region. It is in this context that the role of rice farming systems in achieving the zero hunger goals has to be considered.

The world will require 50 per cent more rice in 2030 than in 2015 with approximately 30 per cent less arable land than now. It has been estimated that an additional 100 million tonnes will be required by 2035 in the Asia-Pacific region. The total production of rice in 2013 was 718 million tonnes. How can these challenges be met in countries where rice is the main staple?

First, in all irrigated areas the major emphasis should be on increasing yield per units of land and water. Hybrid rice can help increase yield by about 20 per cent.

Public good research in agriculture is designed to promote risk minimizing agronomy and also the ease of adoption by small and marginal farmers. For example, public good research institutions concentrate on the development of varieties rather than hybrids, since in the case of hybrids, the farmer has to buy the seed every year from the company. In contrast, farmers can keep their own seeds of good varieties of wheat, rice, maize and other crops. We should not underestimate the power of public good research in contrast to profit maximizing private sector research. I shall try to illustrate this from two recent examples, one dealing with basmati rice and another with semi-dwarf wheat varieties.

Basmati rice is appropriately referred to as the Queen of Rice and has been cultivated since centuries in the foothills of the Himalayas. Because of its cooking quality, it is valued highly in national and international markets. Pakistan also grows basmati rice. After the advent of the high-yielding varieties of rice possessing genes for semi-dwarf character, basmati rice was given less importance due to its tall stature and low-yield potential (about 1 tonne per hectare). It is to overcome this difficulty that the IARI started developing semi-dwarf basmati strains, which can respond well to fertilizer and irrigation water application. This work, which began nearly 40 years ago has now resulted in outstanding varieties like Pusa Basmati 1121, which has helped increase foreign exchange earnings by 33,000 crore during 2013–14. During this year IARI released another variety Pusa Basmati 1509, which matures in 120 days and has dwarf stature, sturdy stem, non-lodging and non-shattering habit. Also, Basmati 1509 yields about five tonnes per hectare. Because of its early maturity, Pusa Basmati 1509 has become very popular among farmers adopting a rice–wheat rotation. No wonder, there is enormous demand for the seeds of this variety, which is now occupying a major portion of the basmati area. This is a good example of the power of public good research, with a sharp focus on increasing the productivity and profitability of small holdings.

As in the case of Pusa Basmati rice, the IARI has also been developing and releasing wheat varieties, which help increase the production and productivity of this crop.

The Chhattisgarh Food Security Act passed in 2012 addresses the three major components of the hunger syndrome, which need to be attended to, for every human being to have an opportunity for a healthy and productive life. These are: first, adequate dietary calories to prevent under-nutrition; second, adequate quantity of proteins to fight protein hunger; and third, eliminating hidden hunger caused by the deficiency of micronutrients like iron, zinc, iodine, vitamin A and vitamin B12.

Thus, the Chhattisgarh Act is designed to solve the hunger problem in a holistic manner. Under this Act, protein hunger is to be eliminated through the supply of pulses, in addition to cereals, and hidden hunger is to be solved through fortified salt. I hope the National Food Security Act, which makes access to the minimum essential calories a legal right, will also help solve concurrently protein-calorie under-nutrition and malnutrition induced by micro-nutrient deficiencies, since an integrated attack on the different components of hunger, as well as the provision of clean drinking water are essential to end the high malnutrition burden prevailing in the country.

The international food stock position and the price volatility prevailing in international markets make it clear that a legal right to food in India can be sustained only with the help of home-grown food. This implies that farmers in India need more attention and assistance. To start with, government should implement the National Policy for Farmers, placed in Parliament in November 2007. The policy proposed by the National Commission on Farmers, which I chaired, calls for a paradigm shift in the measurement of agricultural progress from just production figures to the improvement made in the real income of farmers. In other words, the policy calls for an income orientation to farming. Such a shift is nowhere in sight. If this shift does not happen, it will be difficult to attract youth to farming. The uneconomic nature of farming is accompanied by a steep rise in the price of farmland for use for non-farm purposes. This trend can be arrested only if farming yields good and stable income. A reversal of this trend is not happening, although there is realization that the loss of every hectare of prime farmland will be a blow to the Food Security Act.

The Food Security Act provides the option for substituting grain with cash when necessary.

Financial institutions have been exploring avenues for greater participation in the agriculture and rural development sectors. It may therefore be appropriate to refer to a few areas in urgent need of additional attention and investment.

Green Revolution technologies are scale-neutral but not resource-neutral. Inputs are needed for output and therefore market-purchased inputs become important in providing the needed soil and plant healthcare for higher yields. Hence, at that period in India's agricultural history, social scientists pointed out that small and marginal farmers will be excluded from the benefits of the Green Revolution, since they would not have the financial resources to buy the needed inputs. For example, about 25 kg of nitrogen would be needed for a one tonne yield in wheat. Fortunately, the Government of India initiated a Small and Marginal Farmers’ Programme specially to provide the needed credit and other essential inputs. After the nationalization of banks, priority was accorded to the provision of credit to small and marginal farmers. Without this timely support, the wheat revolution would not have become an inclusive revolution covering all farmers irrespective of the size of their holding.In fact, the smaller the farm greater is the need for marketable surplus, so that the farm family will have cash income to meet their multiple needs.

The emerging phase in agriculture will be based on integrating the principles of ecology and equity in technology development and dissemination. This is the pathway to an evergreen revolution leading to an increase in productivity in perpetuity without associated environmental harm. In recent years, the government has been stepping up the availability of credit for agriculture. However, the burden of indebtedness is still very high in rural India, leading to expanding exploitation of the rural masses in the credit market. Much of the credit intended for farmers goes through indirect channels like subsidies to companies and not directly to farmers. Some of the major problems with respect to the supply of credit to rural families are the inadequate supply of formal credit on the whole, imperfect and fragmented rural credit markets, and unequal distribution of credit, particularly with respect to region, class, caste and gender. In spite of the dominant role played by women in both the production and post-harvest phases of farming, they are denied credit because they lack the title to land.

At the close of the 2012 London Olympics, the United Kingdom announced a programme designed to rescue 25 million children worldwide from malnutrition by the time of the next Olympics in Brazil. In May 2012, the World Health Assembly agreed to a target of reducing the number of stunted children by 40 per cent (a reduction of about 70 million children) by 2025. To meet these targets and nourish the 870 million hungry people in the world, the world's leaders will need to prioritize an innovative science-based marriage of nutrition and agriculture.

The problem of hunger is not simply a lack of sufficient quantities of food. The chronic hunger caused by protein and calorie under-nutrition is exacerbated by malnutrition (the ‘hidden’ hunger caused by the deficiency of micronutrients, which include iron, iodine, zinc, vitamin A and vitamin B12), and sometimes by human diseases that disable the body's ability to absorb the micronutrients it receives. To address such intertwined problems, there must be synergy among national programmes dealing with the availability, access to, and absorption of food. These nutrition security programmes should be based on a life-cycle approach that starts with the ‘first 1000 days’ from pregnancy to two year old, the critical period when stunting can cause irreversible damage.

The United Nations (UN) Committee on World Food Security has released a comprehensive report on Social Protection for Food Security with recommendations for combating chronic childhood hunger. One of its recommendations – the concept of a ‘food security floor’ – is particularly worthy of mention. The food security floor recognizes the fact that freedom from hunger is a fundamental human right, defining the minimal steps needed for hunger elimination. These include nutrition literacy, clean drinking water, sanitation and primary health care.

In some ‘hunger hotspots’ of the world where agriculture is the backbone of survival, as in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, mainstreaming nutrition in agriculture programmes is the most effective and low-cost method of eliminating malnutrition. This requires greater attention to the net income of smallholder farmers, whose women food producers have particular needs that require specific policies and support. As an example, the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai, India, has designed a Farming System for nutrition initiative, comprising specific steps.

With a gradual decline in the size of farm holdings, small and marginal farmer families are in need of multiple sources of income to come out of the poverty trap. Rural men belonging to resource-poor families increasingly tend to go to towns and cities seeking work and income earning opportunities. Consequently, there is increasing feminization of agriculture. While women farmers are extremely hardworking and are also conversant with sustainable agriculture practices, they suffer from several handicaps such as title to land, as well as access to credit, inputs, insurance, technology and markets. As early as 1995, the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing urged developing countries to pay attention to the gender specific needs of women farmers.

India has just enacted a landmark Food Security Act. Legal entitlements to food can be implemented only by improving the productivity, profitability and sustainability of small farm holdings, since small and marginal farmers produce nearly 50 per cent of the food-grains in the country, as well as milk and a wide variety of vegetables and fruits. The need for paying special attention to the needs of women farmers has been recognized by initiating a Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana in the Union Budget of 2010–11.

In order to safeguard national food security, and to strengthen the livelihood security of rural women, a majority of whom are engaged in crop and animal husbandry, fisheries, agro-forestry and agro-processing, I introduced the Women Farmers’ Entitlements Bill in the Rajya Sabha on 11 May 2012.

The preamble to the Bill reads:

According to the 2011 census, farm families constitute the majority of India's population. A high proportion of marginal farm families as well as landless labour families suffer from under-nutrition or lack of nutrition, because of inadequate income. Thus, we have to deal with three kinds of hunger if we are to achieve food and nutrition security for all.

First, we have to help farm families overcome under-nutrition as a result of calorie deprivation. This can be achieved through the National Food Security Act. Second, protein hunger is becoming serious due to the inadequate consumption of pulses and milk (in the case of vegetarians) and eggs, fish and meat (in the case of non-vegetarians). Third, there is widespread hidden hunger, caused by the deficiency of micro-nutrients such as iron, iodine, zinc, vitamin A, vitamin B12, among others in the diet.

The nutri-farm initiative for which a provision of 200 crore has been provided in the budget of 2013–14 is designed to give concurrent attention to the three major problems mentioned above. About 100 high malnutrition burden districts have been selected for starting this project during kharif this year. Since neither the ICAR nor agricultural universities seem to be involved in this exercise, I suggest that in each of the 100 districts chosen, a technical advisory committee (TAC) be constituted, consisting of appropriate experts in agronomy, agro-meteorology, farming systems design and nutrition. Nutrition experts from home science colleges will be helpful in identifying major nutritional maladies prevailing in the area.

The TAC could also suggest how to achieve convergence and synergy among ongoing programmes like the National Food Security and Horticulture Missions, Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojana and Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana. Such convergence will be very helpful in maximizing the benefits and impact of all these programmes.

For ensuring the success of the nutri-farm programme, a nutritional literacy movement needs to be launched in the chosen districts. For this purpose, it will be useful to request panchayats to nominate one woman and one man to be trained as community hunger fighters who will familiarize the village community with the nutritional maladies prevailing in the area. Thus, they will enable farm families to overcome nutritional maladies through the appropriate introduction of agricultural remedies in the prevailing farming system.

The year 2012–13 represents the centenary year of the Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA). The focal theme of the centenary session in January 2013 chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was ‘Science and Shaping India's Future’. The only other Prime Minister who has so far served as the general president of the Indian Science Congress is Jawaharlal Nehru. This historic session was held in 1947 and Nehru then made the oft-quoted statement: ‘The future belongs to science and to those who make friendship with science.’ It is a good augury that the year of science has started with global recognition given to tribal families of the Koraput district of Odisha for the sustainable and climate-resilient farming systems they have developed over the centuries. These families were recognized through the selection of their traditional agricultural system for inclusion under the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems of the FAO. Knowledge is a continuum and therefore we should respect both indigenous knowledge and frontier science. The future of food security will depend on a combination of the ecological prudence of the past and the technological advances of today and tomorrow.

A second area, which deserves attention during the international year of science is harnessing transformational genes and technologies. A good example of a transformational gene is the Norin 10 dwarfing gene in wheat, identified at the Norin Experiment Station, Japan, which enabled the breeding of semi-dwarf varieties like Kalyansona and Sonalika, capable of responding to good soil fertility and moisture content. These varieties helped usher in the wheat revolution in the 1960s. Similar transformational genes have been identified and used in rice, maize and other crops. More recently, genetic engineering technology has helped identify and introduce transformational genes conferring tolerance to salinity, drought and floods.

A recent example of transformational technology is mobile telephony. Artisanal fishery is getting transformed through the application of mobile telephony. Small-scale fishermen going out to sea in catamarans can now leave the shore with information on wave heights at different distances and the location of fish shoals. Earlier they used to spend over 10 hours on sea but they now come back within two hours with good fish catch. Also, the fear of the sea, which they developed after the tsunami of December 2004, has disappeared since they know what the wave heights will be at different distances from the shoreline.

India is predominantly a land of the youth. It is soon likely to be a nation with the highest number of young women and men. The challenge before the government, academia, civil society, youth organizations, parents and teachers is to make our youthful human resource into a blessing for national happiness and prosperity, by providing opportunities for a healthy, productive and creative life.

In a book titled Last Child in the Woods (Hill, 2006), Richard Louv has drawn attention to the links between the absence of nature in the lives of today's wired generation and some of the most disturbing childhood trends, such as obesity, attention disorder and depression. He has termed this phenomenon ‘nature-deficit disorder’, or the human costs of alienation from nature. By weighing the consequences of the disorder, we can also become aware of how blessed our children can be – biologically, cognitively, and spiritually – through positive physical connection to nature. The best way of saving our children from nature-deficit disorder is to adopt learning procedures based on tools that can strengthen their understanding and appreciation of nature.

Both the need and the opportunities for a ‘learning revolution’ have never been as great as they are now. What is needed is the will to act. The words spoken by Dr Zakir Hussain while assuming the office of the President of India in 1967 are even more relevant today:

India is also predominantly a rural nation. The most important occupation in villages is agriculture, consisting of crop and animal husbandry, fisheries, forestry and agro-forestry, agro-processing and agri-business. While modern industry promotes jobless economic growth, agriculture and allied sectors promote job-led growth. A majority of youth in our country will have to, therefore, depend on agriculture for their vocation. Obviously, educated youth will be attracted to farm-related occupations only if farming becomes intellectually stimulating and economically rewarding. Since over 80 per cent of the farm holdings belong to small and marginal farmer categories, both farm and non-farm income will be essential to provide young farmers reasonable income security.

It is no accident that the ‘eradication of extreme poverty and hunger’ was first on the list of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. Access to food and proper nutrition has a direct impact on our capacity to reduce child mortality, to enhance maternal health and even to boost primary school attendance – all of which were announced in the year 2000 as development priorities. Crucially, the ways in which we grow food are profoundly linked to our ability to ensure environmental sustainability – another Millennium Development Goal.

Few people have understood the urgency of tackling the complex challenge of global food security better than Professor M. S. Swaminathan. Few have advocated so effectively for the need to bring scientists, non-governmental organisations, global policymakers and local communities together to achieve the objective of a hunger-free world.

There are some staggering facts to consider. We know that the world's current food production is enough to feed its entire population one and half times. And yet, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, one in eight people suffer from chronic malnutrition. Meanwhile, more food is wasted per year in the developed world than is produced in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa in the same period. As many of the essays in this collection demonstrate, the main issue is not scarcity, but poverty and equality. And the answer does not lie in the increasing yields, but in improving them.

For decades Professor Swaminathan has campaigned for the introduction of enriched food crops, for a greater emphasis on nutrition-sensitive agriculture, for a more balanced integration of the world's food and energy security strategies, and for better communication between scientists and the public. In India, he is rightly acknowledged as the man behind the country's ‘Green Revolution’, which propelled the country to self-sufficiency in grain production in the 1960s. A more recent achievement is his influential role in the enactment of India's National Food Security Act (2013), which makes provision of nourishment for the country's poorest a legal entitlement.

But his continued and ever-developing thoughts on the questions surrounding food security, and his promotion of an ‘evergreen revolution’, point to the global scale of the challenge. While the effects of biodiversity loss and climate change are felt locally, the task of managing them has to be international, and concerted.