National growth linked with improved women status: IFPRI chief
 

 December 28: Prof. Shenggen Fan, Director General, International Food
Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington DC said that hunger and malnutrition
continued to be challenging problems among 29 countries of the world, and India was
one of them.  As such, food and nutrition availability should be the major development
goals in the national policy of these developing nations.

    Delivering a special lecture on the second day of the 93rd annual conference
of Indian Economic Association (IEA) organized by the Panjab University on the campus
here today, Prof. Shenggen said that agriculture led growth was more pro-nutrition and
priorities must be country specific.  In the Indian context agricultural growth
especially in vegetable, fruit and dairy products was needed.  He also talked about
improving status of women and rural infrastructure, including drinking water, rural
health and sanitation.  Conditional factors such as land distribution, women’s status
have an impact on the growth-nutrition link factor, Prof. Shenggen said adding that
growth strategies and investment policies were needed to integrate nutrition as one of
the development goals. Governments, he said, should pay attention to tide over the
alarming situation of malnutrition urgently as other development issues were related
to it.

    Panjab University of India, he said, was one of the best universities in
research and he advocated promotion of biotechnology as one of the important areas of
research that could pave way to meet food security if other institutes of India also
adopted it.    

Press Release No.679