Food Security as A Geopolitical Challenge: India's Role in Building Resilient and Sustainable Global Food Systems

As armed conflicts, climate change, trade restrictions, supply chain disruptions, resource scarcity, and volatile food prices threaten food systems worldwide, the issue of food security has gained renewed geopolitical significance. This review paper attempts to conceptualize the issue of food security within the framework of International Relations by focussing on India’s emerging role as a provider of resilient and sustainable global food systems. The paper tries to analyse the shift of food as an issue from development and agricultural sector-centric to its current status as a strategic good linked to statecraft, geopolitics, economic interdependence, and national security. The Paper analyse the Russia-Ukraine war, climate disasters, export bans, and disruptions in energy, fertilizers, and maritime logistics, as factors that have reshaped global food security. In its first part, the paper looks at India’s food security situation, including agricultural production, public distribution, food availability, climate change, groundwater depletion, and malnutrition. However, the second part focusses on India’s use of its emerging status as a global food provider in its geopolitical strategies and examines India’s food diplomacy in G20 and South-South partnerships. The study contends that India can play a pivotal role in building strategic food security through a combination of diversified production, climate-smart agriculture, sustainable groundwater management, digitalization of agriculture, reduction of food loss and waste, and trade for food security to build resilient food systems both within and outside the country. The paper recommends that India’s future role in global food security discourse moves beyond being a food bowl for others to engage in food diplomacy to shape global food governance to make international food systems more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable.