CONSULTATION ON INDIA FOOD SECURITY PORTAL

IFPRI organized a one day consultation on Food Security Portal Partnership and Policy Dialogue in India on April 30,2013 in New Delhi. The aim of the consultation was to create a food security portal that would strengthen policy research, develop strong analysis capacity and increase active policy network with interactive policy dialogue. Giving an overview of the existing Global Food Security Portal,   Maximo Torero, Division Director MTID said, the India portal will articulate with global food security portal, which would combine both global and national initiatives to work towards food security.

To understand the disparities in food security situation, initially the portal will cover three states Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat and would later expand to rest of India. P K Joshi, Director South Asia, IFPRI said, we would closely monitor food security indicators in real time for creating database for medium to long term projections and prioritize the existing gaps. Devesh Roy, Research Fellow, IFPRI, added, we would be partnering with  institutions, private sector and NGO’s to take this effort ahead in three states in India.

Speaking on the incremental financial and distributional implications of the revised National Food Security Bill that was distributed in the Parliament in March 2013, Prachi Mishra, Senior Economists at Ministry of Finance said, estimating the cost of NFSB can be more involved than simply estimating the cost of additional food grains. She said it is necessary to incorporate –     Expenditures for running the program,    Grandfathering the existing beneficiaries and Including the misclassified

The consultation was participated by the team members from Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and by government representatives, researchers, private sector and NGO’s. The group discussed the key food security research areas and priorities for India and as per the region.