Food, Water, Energy Shortages Threaten India Security

India’s future is threatened by shortages of food, water and energy and these should be addressed on a priority basis, the Prime Minister’s security adviser said.

“These are part of a broad national security plan, and defense is only one aspect of it,” Shekhar Dutt, India’s deputy national security adviser, said in an interview in New Delhi yesterday. “We think water is going to be a very severe determinant of prosperity and well-being.”
Inadequate rainfall has led to a drought in as many as 278 of India’s 626 districts, according to the farm ministry. This has sparked concern over food shortages and rising prices, prompting authorities to raid wholesalers hoarding commodities. Raw sugar futures have soared 90 percent this year.

“Unless we drive in the fear of god among hoarders, the man on the street will suffer from rising prices,” Ashok Das, principal secretary of food, civil supplies and consumer protection in the central Madhya Pradesh state, said in a phone interview from Bhopal today. Authorities seized 480 metric tons of sugar in the past week, he said.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year imposed stockpiling limits on food items such as wheat and sugar to curb hoarding as inflation surged to a 16-year high. The government ended import taxes on edible oils, banned exports of rice and halted futures trading in commodities including soybean oil and potatoes to cool prices and avert riots that broke out in more than 30 developing countries including Haiti and Pakistan.

Without measures to curb demand, dwindling groundwater supplies may cause drinking-water shortages and erode crop production in a region inhabited by 114 million people, the authors said. Water harvesting involves collecting rain from rooftops and local catchments and capturing seasonal floodwaters.

Power shortages impede development in India as more than 400 million people lack electricity and supply falls short of peak demand by 16.6 percent, the World Bank said in June.

Bloomberg