As we all know, the international community has agreed to work together to reduce hunger and poverty by half no later than 2015. But the world is not on track to meet these milestones. If current trends continue, there will still be about 600 million hungry people in 2015, far short of the target of 400 million. Declines in poverty have also been minimal in the past decade—the number of people in the world who live on less than US$1 a day has fallen by only 12 million since 1990. With business as usual, almost a billion people will still live in absolute poverty by 2015. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will not be achieved without a fundamental development paradigm shift. South Asia is the region of the world with the highest concentration of poverty. Although South Asia is expected to reduce the incidence of poverty substantially by 2015, progress must be accelerated. This will require shaping policy not only to promote economic growth but also to improve distribution. To achieve more equitable growth, policies to generate employment opportunities, for example, must be accompanied by strengthened and better-targeted safety nets for the vulnerable segments of the population.

This must be an important reason for National Governments to spend a particular amount on agricultural research. But in the last 10 or 15 years, with the growing privatization of science and technology levels, it is a fact that more advances in science and technology in areas like biotechnology are coming not from the public sector for sure, but from the private sector in research and development initiatives. The challenge is how to encourage this creativity, this innovativeness, and at the same time to ensure that new products and new processes will be far affordable for the vast majority of farmers who live on the edges of subsistence. And this will determine and enhance the level of Rural Development in developing countries like India.

Even as we widen the scope of our policy concerns with respect to the agrarian economy, we must not forget that there remain the enduring challenges of our food economy that continue to demand our attention. It has been noted, for instance, that food grains demand has been decelerating in India in recent years, despite stability in food prices and persistence of low nutritional standards among the poor. What is puzzling is the fact that statistical evidence does not point to deterioration in the health indicators. Rather, there is an improvement in human development indicators pertaining to the health status of the people. How do we explain this puzzle?