After an initial focus on agriculture, industrialisation was given priority. The
recurrent droughts experienced by India pushed her to be dependent on imports of food grains.However, the available foreign exchange reserve could not permit open market purchases and import of grains. India had to plead for food grains from richer countries at concessional rates. United States of America extended
assistance through its Public Law 480 (PL 480) scheme to India during early 1960s.
A growing country with a massive population was perceived to be a potential
candidate for revolution. The American administration and philanthropic organisations like Ford Foundation formulated a plan to increase food production in the country by introducing High Yielding Varieties (HYV) of wheat and rice. This programme was implemented in select districts where irrigation was assured. The results were promising and the programme was extended to cover a larger
number of districts.
The rapid increase in food grain production was accompanied by appropriate
technological interventions in the dairy, poultry and fisheries sectors. As a result, the milk production in the country witnessed an eight-fold increase, egg production grew 40-fold and fish production by 13-fold between the time of Independence and mid-2000s. However, India could not succeed in attaining self-sufficiency in the production of pulses and oil seeds. Therefore, India depends on imports
to meet the requirements of people.
Over population
The population growth rate in India is high as 1.7 per 1000. Large population leads to increasing demand, but supply was not equal to the demand. So, the normal price level will be going an higher. So it affect purchasing power, especially in rural population.States and their functional equivalents throughout history have used money provided by taxation to carry out many functions. Some of these include expenditures on economic infrastructure (transportation, sanitation,public safety, education, healthcare systems,to name a few), military, scientific research,culture and the arts, public works and public insurance and the operation of government
itself. A government's ability to raise taxes is called its fiscal capacity.
When expenditures exceed tax revenue, a government accumulates debt. A portion of taxes may be used to service past debts. Governments also use taxes to fund welfare and public services. These services can include education systems,pensions for the elderly, unemployment benefits and public transportation. Energy, water and waste management systems are also common public utilities.
Increasing prices of essential goods
Even though there has been a constant growth in the GDP and growth opportunities in the Indian economy, there have been steady increase in the prices of essential goods. The continuous rise in the prices erodes the purchasing power and adversely affect the poor people.More than half of the women in the
reproductive age group (15–49 years) in bothrural and urban India were anaemic in 2015–16. As regards children, about 60% of the rural and 56% of the urban children (in the age group of 6–59 months) are counted to be anaemic, in 2015–16. About 41% of the rural and 31% of urban children are stunted, that is, they are
not of the required height in correspondence to their age. Another indicator of nutrition deficiency among children is “underweight”,which is weight in relation to age. In India,in 2015–16, about 20% of children(in the age group of 6–59 months) in rural and urban India are estimated to be underweight.
Nutrition and Health Status in Tamil Nadu
Nutrition plays a crucial role in human health and well-being. At the national level,
despite higher economic growth, improvements in human development indicators like nutrition levels of the population have been unacceptably slow. A large number of Indian children are stunted. A substantial number of Indian children and women are underweight, anaemic and suffer from micronutrient deficiencies.To address these concerns, the Central and state governments have been channellising
substantial resources into various health and nutrition schemes and programmes like Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS),mid-day meals, Reproductive and Child Health Programmes (RCH) and National Rural Health Mission (NRHM). However, an effective scaling up of these efforts is required to mitigate the
incidence of under-nutrition in the country
The Government of Tamil Nadu’s policy for “A Malnutrition Free Tamil Nadu” guides the state’s long-term multi-sectoral strategy for eliminating malnutrition. The goal is “reducing human malnutrition of all types to the levels of best performing countries”.In Tamil Nadu,ICDS is being implemented through 54,439
Child Centres (comprising 49,499 Anganwadi Centres and 4,940 Mini Anganwadi Centres) in 434 Child Development Blocks (385 rural, 47 urban and 2 tribal).
With steady expansion into unreached areas, increasing coverage of marginalised
groups, enhanced allocations and enlarged scope of services, ICDS is now considered to be one of the world’s largest programmes of its kind.
Governments collect various taxes to finance the various activities mentioned earlier. The taxes are collected in a way that the high-income people can
bring in more tax revenue to the government than the poor. The governments also spend money such that the poor are given some basic necessities of life like food, shelter,clothing education, health care and monthly income to the very poor persons.Thus collecting taxes and spending for the poor to reduce poverty.
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