CG Board Class 10 Social Science Chapter 20 Solutions: Food Security (खाद्य सुरक्षा) (2026-27)

b) 2012**

d) 6 years** (Text explicitly states: “monitoring children aged 6 months to 6 years… 90% of mental development occurs during this phase”).

d) Body mass index**

d) Minimum support price**

Minimum Support Price (MSP) is the pre-announced price at which the government (through FCI) buys wheat and rice directly from farmers. It protects farmers from market price crashes and encourages increased agricultural production.

Buffer stock is the reserve stock of food-grains purchased by FCI and maintained in government warehouses. It ensures a continuous supply to fair price shops and meets emergency shortages during natural disasters or droughts.

Fair price shops (ration shops) are retail outlets set up under PDS across villages and towns. They distribute essential commodities (rice, wheat, sugar, salt) at subsidized rates to eligible ration card holders.

It is calculated by dividing total national food-grain availability by the population and then dividing by 365 days. It indicates whether national food supply is sufficient to meet individual daily consumption needs.

The primary objectives of food security are

1. Ensuring physical availability of adequate food-grains across the country.
2. Guaranteeing economic access and affordability so all citizens have purchasing power.
3. Ensuring proper nutritional absorption for living a healthy and dignified life.

Landless agricultural labourers, daily wage casual workers, urban slum dwellers, traditional artisans, destitute individuals, pregnant/lactating women, and young children in low-income families are most affected by food insecurity.

Daily wage workers rely on daily employment to earn money for buying food. Events like curfews or market shutdowns stop their work instantly, completely wiping out their daily income and leaving them unable to purchase food, making them immediately vulnerable to hunger.

The sudden spurt in food-grain production from the 1970s onwards was driven by planned development, high-yielding crop varieties (HYV), expansion of irrigation infrastructure, increased chemical fertilizer usage, and government Minimum Support Price (MSP) incentives.

Prolonged calamities like drought destroy standing crops, stopping local food production. If the government fails to deploy buffer stocks and public distribution networks, grain availability collapses, prices rise sharply, and severe starvation ensues.

Three key schemes include

1. Public Distribution System (PDS): Provides monthly subsidized food-grains to eligible households via fair price shops.
2. Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS): Operates Anganwadis for health check-ups, nutrition, and vaccinations for mothers and children aged 6 months to 6 years.
3. Mid-Day Meal (MDM) Scheme: Serves cooked nutritious lunches to children in government schools to combat hunger and boost education.

The Food Corporation of India (FCI) procures food-grains at MSP from surplus farming regions, stores them safely in large godowns, and maintains regular supply lines to state fair price shops for smooth PDS distribution.

The government holds a buffer stock to ensure continuous grain supply to fair price shops and to stabilize prices and prevent famine during crop failures, natural disasters, or unexpected national scarcities.

Long-term hunger causes chronic malnutrition, retards physical and mental development, severely weakens immune function, and leaves individuals vulnerable to frequent infections, low productivity, and premature death.

Landless agricultural labourers, fishermen, transport workers, casual wage earners, and rural artisans were most severely affected due to loss of employment and sky-rocketing grain prices.

Yes, invisible hunger (long-term malnutrition) weakens physical capacity, impairs learning abilities, reduces worker productivity, and creates generational health deficits, acting as a massive obstacle to national economic development.

The three core dimensions of food security are

1. Availability: Sufficient overall production and stock of food-grains in the country.
2. Access: Efficient state supply systems (PDS, MDM, ICDS) enabling food to reach every region.
3. Affordability: Adequate purchasing power ensuring individuals can buy nutritious food at reasonable prices.

A balanced diet contains required proportions of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals, and roughage. The body needs it to maintain growth, repair tissues, build immunity against diseases, and provide daily energy.

Children under 5 years are underweight and stunted because their mothers suffer from severe malnutrition during pregnancy, leading to low birth weight. Inadequate post-birth supplementary nutrition perpetuates this vicious cycle of growth stunting.

Students should measure weight and height of family/neighbourhood members, compute their BMI (weight/height²), compare against adult WHO benchmarks (underweight < 18.5, normal 18.5-24.9, overweight > 25), and record nutritional observations.