Patna, June 1: In India, where millions die of starvation while tonnes of undistributed food grains rot, a serious monitoring of the process from production of grains to the distribution has become the call of the day.

Oxfam, the rights-based organisation that fights poverty and injustice, has now taken up cudgels to address the cause of food for all. Oxfam India, in its 60th year of functioning launched Grow, a four-year campaign on food justice programme in Bihar.

Already actively running in 40 countries. The programme was simultaneously launched in Bihar, New Delhi, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Lucknow and Mumbai.

Food and consumer protection minister Shyam Rajak, who was present at the launch, said: “A major challenge that Bihar and other states face is the shortage of godowns to preserve the grains. The present capacity to store grains is 1.5 lakh metric tonnes whereas the required capacity is 6 lakh metric tonnes. For this, we need more support from Food Corporation of India. We are also trying to regulate the functioning of the public distribution system (PDS) in the state to prevent any discrepancies in the distribution of grains. For this, the government has already allotted some PDS to self-help groups.”

The minister also highlighted the ongoing efforts of the government to establish a Krishi cabinet, which would focus on agriculture and farmer-related problems and solutions and start a cash subsidy system for below poverty line (BPL) families.

“Our government is making sincere efforts to provide subsidised foodgrain to 80 lakh BPL families who don’t figure in the central government’s list of BPL families in Bihar, under the Chief Minister Food Security Scheme,” added Rajak.

Pravind Kumar Praveen, regional manager, Oxfam, east India, said: “The rapidly changing climatic conditions have affected the growth of grains which have caused production imbalances. Also landless farmers and too much fragmentation of lands have also played a role. This has lead to many farmer suicide cases and it’s high time we raise the concern of food insecurity and unjust distribution.”

Through Grow, Oxfam aims to work on a three-level basis.

One is to create awareness on issues of food security, second to provide technical know how by educating the farmers about systemic wheat intensification (SWI) and systemic rice intensification (SRI) methods as well as on methods related to disaster preparedness and third a committee capacity building specially those like farmers’ club, self-help group at the village and block levels.

A special invitee to the event was film and theatre personality, Anjan Srivastava of Wagle ki Duniya fame.