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Food Securit! and Panchayati Raj, Edited by Pradeep Chaturvedi, Concept Publishing Company, New Delhi, 1997. Pp. xv+304. Rs. 400.00.
The Eleventh Schedule of the 73rd Amendment to the Constitution enlists 29 important functions to be carried out by the Panchayats. These functions have a significant bearing for promoting development of rural infrastructure in terms of both social and economic. and more importantly, for alleviating living conditions of the rural people, particularly of the rural poor. Of these 29 items. functions like promotion of agriculture, poverty alleviation programmes and public distribution have a direct impact on ensuring food security and nutrition for the poor. The onus of providing such security has fallen now on panchayats. on which the book under review takes a dig at. It assesses important reasons l`or lack of food security and the potential of village panchayats as important mechanisms for ensuring food security at the village level.
This edited book is divided into six parts with 30 papers written on different facets ot food security and Panchayati Raj. Part I has nine papers and much of its content is devoted to examine the salient features of panchayats, particularly after they attained the constitutional status effected through the 73rd Amendment. The essence of this new feature of Panchayati Raj has been to promote greater decentralisation of governance to ensure participation of people in the management of affairs affecting them not only in the process of decision-making but also in planning and management of programmes of development. Some of the papers clearly make a case for panchayat's intervention in ensuring food security. While making this, some papers point out that the panchayats should not enga,ue themselves in commercial activity. Instead, they should be able to encourage and provide support systems to co-operative, private and voluntary initiatives so as to meet the needs of their villages in the matter of food security. In addition to this, the panchayats should encourage food production, prevent pre-harvest and post-harvest losses, check losses in storage. estimate the gap between demand and local production and ensure that the deficit would be met through normal trading...