1 Uncorrected/ Not for publication- 08.12.2009 SSS-AKG/11.00/1A ...

187Uncorrected/ Not for publication- 08.12.2009Sir, according to the Planning Commission, an average person inthe village requires a minimum intake of 2400 Calories of food per day,and those living in urban areas require 2100 Calories per day. I ask you,Sir, given the current prices of food stuff, how does he get it? It is amatter of national shame that more than half of the population remainsmalnourished. Sir, according to the Global Hunger Index that rankscountries on a scale of 100 with 0 being the best score, India has a GHIof 23.9 which is an alarming value. We stand next only to Bangladesh,Ethiopia and Pakistan. These are last year's figures. With the currentprices, we are, perhaps, below them even.Sir, in reply to a debate on the sugar prices, the hon. FinanceMinister said that the prices are going up because there is a mismatchbetween demand and supply. We all know that. We also know that wehave had a drought year, but does that mean that we let our poorstarve?Sir, to my mind, the only solution to meet this challenge is toincrease our food production, and this would be possible only if wemake farming a lucrative profession or business. According to theDeputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, a recent National Surveyhas shown that 49 per cent of the farmers would not like to be infarming given a choice. Sir, our farmers are perennially in debt, andmany unfortunately resort to suicide to end their misery. This is sobecause of the myopic policies of successive Governments that haveonly given lip-service to the interests of the farmer.Sir, to improve our farmer's plight, we need to incentivise him. Weneed to give him better MSP, and this MSP should be realistically