New Delhi: Around 120 activists representing 100 odd organizations from 12 Indian states Wednesday launched a national platform to ensure food security in the country.
The Lok Manch (people’s platform) was launched at the opening of a three-day workshop on April 6 at the Indian Social Institute (ISI), New Delhi.
Jesuit Father Sannybhai, national coordinator of Lok Manch, said the new forum would be open to those committed to building a secular, democratic, pluralist and inclusive India based on the Constitutional values. It will also enable the Indian citizens, especially the marginalized, to lead a dignified life.
The Lok Manch also aims to help the marginalized take charge of their lives and the community and begin to shape their own destiny and history, the Jesuit social activist added.
Fr Sannybhai said the activists will use the workshop to explore effective strategies to help grassroots communities in their states to take advantage of the Act’s various provisions. They will also seek ways to encourage leadership at the grassroots to help people live with dignity, he added.
The workshop, jointly hosted by ISI’s Delhi and Bengaluru units, Jesuit Social Action Secretariat, and Lok Manch secretariat, will address the various entitlements under the National Food Security Act 2013.
Delivering the keynote address, Harsh Mander, director of the Centre for Equity Studies and a special commissioner to the Supreme Court of India in the Right to Food case, noted endemic individual hunger as a major problem confronting India. Some 80 million tons of food grains are allowed to rot in government storehouses when people collect undigested food grains from the cattle dung to satisfy their hunger, he regretted.
Asserting that such a criminal waste was an abomination, the social scientist said the right to life enshrined in article 21 of the Constitution of India aims to ensure dignified human existence for the people. Both food and freedom are basic human needs and that one could not be sacrificed for the sake of the other, Mander asserted.
Speaking on the occasion, Fr George Patteri, Jesuit Provincial of South Asia, urged the participants to give their best cooperation to create a hunger-free India, which, he said, is an unfinished agenda of the country’s freedom struggle.
The inaugural session was chaired by Jesuit Irudaya Jothi, director of a social service center in Kolkata who has been spearheading the Right to Food campaign in West Bengal for about eight years. He endorsed the views of both Mander and Fr Patteri.
A Hindi version of training resources was released as part of the opening session. An English version of the same would be released within the next 15 days, it was announced. At the same session, a new website of Lok Manch, hamaralokmanch.net, was also released.
Biraj Patnaik, principal adviser to the Supreme Court commissioners on the right to food, underscored accessibility, availability and absorption as the three features of right to food. He also stated that the right to food is built on maternity benefits of women, Public Distribution System, Mid-day Meals Scheme, and Integrated Child Development Scheme.
Joe Xavier, former director of Indian Social Institute, Delhi, said the workshop aimed to increase ownership of Lok Manch and build partnership; study the National Food Security Act 2013 and seek ways to overcome various challenges in accessing and implementing it.
The workshop also held group discussions to strengthen the Lok Manch and expanded it to other states.