Indian Church should call food summit urgently

By George Kannanthanam

Bengaluru, Oct 16, 2021: Today (October 16) is World Food Day, I urge the Church in India to convene a Food Summit.

It is time the Church in India called for a Food Summit. With more than 800 million people living in hunger worldwide and good many of them being in India, the Church cannot be silent. The Church has to play a more active role in ensuring food for everyone in our country.

October 16 is observed as World Food Day as the date marks the starting of Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations in 1945. This day aims at tackling global hunger and striving to eradicate hunger across the world. World Food Day, established in November 1979, is observed by more than 150 countries around the world.

It is very disturbing that even after 85 years of the FAO foundation, the top priority in the world continues to be ending hunger. ‘End Hunger’ is the second among the 16 of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Realizing the importance of dealing with hunger, the UN Food Systems Summit was conducted by the United Nations on September 23 under the leadership of the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres. He said that “food is life and food is hope.” The aim of the summit was to deliver progress on all 17 of the SDGs through a food systems approach, leveraging the interconnectedness of food systems to global challenges such as hunger, climate change, poverty and inequality.

Pope Francis has been closely involved in the issue of hunger in the world. He sent a message to the Pre Food Summit held in Rome in July. He said that “we produce enough food for all but many go without their daily bread. This constitutes a genuine scandal, an offence that violates basic human rights.”

Addressing the World Food Forum, a youth led movement to achieve the SDGs, in Rome on October 1, Pope Francis said that the youth must come out with concrete and meaningful actions to deal with hunger.

On the eve of World Food Day, Pope Francis sent a message to the director general of FAO “to adopt innovative solutions to transfer the way we produce and consume food for the well being of the people and of the planet.”

Pope Francis recently joined 25 countries to fight against poverty and hunger in first round of pledges to the UN’s new initiative called International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which is committed to ensure that hundreds of millions of rural people across the world has enough to survive.

Worse is the situation in India. India slipped to 101st rank in Global Hunger Index among 116 countries where data was available in a report published on the October 14. While we can contest the methodology of making the report, the reality is that the situation of poverty in India is alarming.

As per the Hunger Report of FAO for 2020, 189 million people are undernourished in India which is 14 percent of the population; 51 percent of women in reproductive age are anemic and 35 percent of children aged under five in India are stunted.

Covid 19 has made the situation much worse. The lockdown literally robbed the poor of whatever sources of survival they had. Most of the unorganized working classes lost their daily job and income. Migrants had to flee leaving everything they had built up over the years to their places of origin, which had very little to offer them. Even the middle class families struggled to feed the members. And sadly the same situation continues for many.

I saw this directly across the city of Bengaluru during every day of the lock down. People waited in long queues in every hamlet, slum and settlement that we travelled in our ambulance with the dry ration kits under our CoronaCare Bengaluru program covering about 30,000 families.

When we launched Mother’s Meal program, as a sustained support to the families for six months to one year, covering families with persons with disabilities, terminal illness, widows and elderly without any support, there were requests from every part of the country. Every institution or NGO wanted to provide the Kits to many a families they knew living in hunger in their neighborhood.

We could cover only about 3,000 families covering all the states. The demand came even from outside the country and thus we started with Mother’s Meal program in Nepal, Macau, Uganda, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Sri Lanka. There was no end to the list of the hungry.

I am just back from a program in Kasargod district of Kerala on October 14, where we were providing food for over 100 families since last October. Every month a dry ration kit worth five hundred rupees with 17 items meant for preparing food for families in distress was provided to them. Their request is to continue the program even after one year. It is a totally non-Christian group that we collaborate..

Another program I inaugurated this week in Bengaluru was called ‘365 days,’ an initiative by a youth group named Good Quest Foundation. They engage women without a job and earning to cook food that will be served to families in distress. They plan to cover every slum area in the city and ensure no one goes hungry. Good Quest is a non-Catholic group.

Thus the question is what we can do as a Church.

Hunger was an issue Jesus was aware of and concerned about. He did not want anyone to go hungry. He found instant answers to their hunger whenever he realized their situation. He was not just giving solace to our soul but answered to our every human need.

The Church has responded well to the hungry during the Covid times. There have been numerous initiatives from various dioceses and institutions. Number of faithful who spared no means to feed the hungry is huge. Our national bodies like Caritas India and Catholic Health Association of India responded with innovative interventions to bring solace to the hungry in their areas of work. But most of it was sporadic and even individual initiatives.

The Church as a whole has not perceived hunger as an issue of importance. It has not taken upon itself the responsibility to officially own up poverty as its priority focus of intervention. There was no resolve or decision at the national level to focus attention on this issue and to respond to it.

Because of this the gigantic Church resources were not utilized fully to answer to the issue of hunger.

An Indian Church Food Summit by the official Church involving all its social subsidiaries and committed personnel would have made a huge impact and difference to the issue of hunger across the country. Its more than 55,000 educational institutions, nearly 11,000 parishes and 4,000 odd health and social organizations would have come out with more organized and effective programs and projects answering to the hungry families around them.

Just consider that each of these 70,000 odd institutions in India took care of just 10 families in distress around them ensuring food for them for a year. It would be 700,000 families every month. About 42 million meals a year. The entire resources required could have been easily raised from generous and affordable families around them.

In reality the impact could have been much bigger. A small initiative named Mother’s Meal under our Hope society has been able to provide five million meals in the past one year through our 80 providers who were motivated to provide food for the families in distress around them. Many raised their own resources, with some support from us.

It is still not late. Hunger is growing. Impact of Covid continues. The hungry are losing hope. On this World Food Day 2021, Let us synergize all our resources. Let us commit to work towards multiplying our five loaves of bread. 189 million Indians are waiting.