Jharkhand becomes the 3rd state to have Food Security Atlas

Jharkhand has become the third state after Bihar and Odisha in eastern India to have Food Security Atlas for its rural areas. Odisha and Bihar had their Atlas launched in 2018. Food Security Atlas of Rural Jharkhand 2022’ launched in Ranchi. Finance Minister of Jharkhand, Dr Rameshwar Oraon assured that the government would make efforts towards giving quota and green cards to the food insecure districts of Jharkhand.

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key points of the Atlas:

This Atlas is an effort toward mapping the food security situation in the state. It has been prepared by the Delhi-based Institute for Human Development (IHD) as part of the research initiative of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai.`
This document will play an important role in informing policy. Given the poor monsoon this year there is a drought-like situation in many districts of the state. Hence, the availability of food is an issue due to the low extent of irrigation and ensuring food security is an even bigger issue wherein 75 per cent of the people need attention whose hunger needs to be eradicated.

Some of the key suggestions:

The food atlas are that 14 out of 24 districts are priority districts and the entire belt of Santhal Pargana region has been marked as alarming in terms of food insecurity. The Atlas suggests that special emphasis needs to be given in terms of overall food security. The Food Atlas suggests that districts with high multidimensional poverty also are highly insecure districts in terms of overall food security and also have very poor food security outcomes.
It also mentions that the state has high instability in food grain production. Also crop diversification is very less in Jharkhand and is mainly a single cropped area. Better irrigation facility is a needed policy to stabilise agricultural production through cropping intensity as well as overall food security
It calls for steps to reduce the impact of rainfall variability and suggests rain harvesting for the priority districts. Construction of dam, renovation of ponds can be initiated on a large scale under MGNREGA and Integrated Watershed programmes.
It also suggests diversification of crops, improve access to food: expanding employment opportunities in non-farm sector, increasing casual wage rate, higher involvement of rural population in processing non-timber forest product, expanding job under MGNREGA, promotion of Millets (distribution of millets through the Public Distribution System).

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