Attempts to Fight Hunger with Pancasila

Abstract

This paper explain about hunger, hunger in general, what causes hunger, how to overcome hunger, hunger situation in Indonesia and hunger from Pancasila point of view. Pancasila as Indonesia’s ideology has five principles that have a lot of values. Hunger in general explain about the definition of hunger it self and how hunger seen by people by people all around the world. What causes hunger explain about causes and reason that make people suffer hunger and why hunger exist. How to overcome hunger explain about things that we can do to prevent and overcome hunger. Hunger situation in Indonesia explain about the current hunger situation that’s in Indonesia right now and what the people and the government know about the hunger in Indonesia. Hunger from Pancasila point of view explain about how Pancasila sees the hunger problem based on their five principle, and how to uses the Pancasila values to overcome and prevent hunger in Indonesia. All of the data in this paper is based on the information and references from the news and article in the Internet.

Background of Problem

There’s still a lot of people in this world who suffer hunger, including in Indonesia. Hunger is one of the major problem in Indonesia and yet a lot of people in Indonesia doesn’t know about this problem. While the people who knows and aware about this problem doesn’t know how to overcome hunger because they didn’t know the causes of hunger in Indonesia.

A lot of people doesn’t take this problem seriously because it doesn’t affect their lives. The government has the solution for this problem by having programs that helps people who suffer hunger. But this programs doesn’t run very affectively because of the injustice from the government, such as corruption that’s being done by the government itself. Those who do corruption in the government only think about themselves and doesn’t think about the impacts that they caused. The injustice bring the biggest impact to those people who have low income. Those people who have low income, usually have no opportunities because of the injustice that the government brings. Many people can’t afford to buy food for themselves and their families. Many children suffers hunger and malnutrition. In their early age, they should have enough nutrition because they need all of the nutrition for their growth.

The Definition of Hunger

Based on Cambridge Dictionary, hunger means in need for food, the feeling you have when you need to eat or a situation in which the body does not have enough food. But hunger is not just a stomach problem, it usually refer to the distress associated with lack of food. Lack of food leads to undernourishment and malnutrition. Underourishment happen when inadequate intake of food (quantity or quality), poor utilizarion of nutrients due to infections or other illness, or a combination of these factors. While malnutrition refers more broadly to both undernutrition and overnutrition, problems of unbalanced diets.

The Causes of Hunger

The world produces enough food to feed the entire global population of 7 billion people. But still, there’s a lot of people on this planet who goes to bed hungry every night. Here’s the biggest question of all, why does hunger exist when there’s enough food to feed the entire global population? According to World Food Programme, there are some basic reasons that causes hunger:

Poverty trap

People who live in poverty can’t afford to buy nutritious food which makes them weaker, physically and mentally. Therefore they can’t earn enough money to help them get out from poverty and hunger. Children that are malnourished, often grow up to be adults with low incomes. They are trapped to a life of poverty and hunger.

Lack of invesment in agriculture

Lack of warehouses, irrigation systems and roads causes the communities to face high transport costs and unreliable water supplies which leads to limit farmers’ yields and families’ access to food.

Climate and weather

Floods, tropical storms and long periods of drought are some examples of natural disasters that causes hunger. Drought is one of the most common causes of food shortages in the world.

War and displacement

Conflicts consistently disrupt farming and food production. Fights also forces millions of people to leave their homes, leading to hunger emergencies. Sometimes food becomes a weapon in a war. Soldiers will starve opponents into submission by seizing or destroying food and livestock and systematically demolitioning local markets.

Unstable markets

Unstable food prices make it difficult for poor people to get nutritious food. When prices rise, those who have low incomes often shift to cheaper, less nutritious foods that leads to malnutrition.

Food wastage

There are a lot of food in this world yet one third of it is never consumed which represents a missed opportunity to improve global food security in a world where one in eight is hungry. The world is moving forward, yet there’s still a lot of people who suffer hunger. Those who suffer hunger are trapped in poverty. Poverty is the main reason for hunger. Those who suffer poverty can’t afford to fulfill their daily needs, such as nutritious food, clean water and education.

Hunger Situation in Indonesia

According to the latest FAO’s research, there are still 19,4 million people suffering hunger in Indonesia. Even though Indonesia is developing, there still a lot of people in Indonesia who can’t afford to fulfill their basic needs, especially in eastern Indonesia, such as Papua, NTT and Maluku. The main reason for this problem is poverty. In 2016, according to BBC Indonesia, those who lives in NTT are threatened to hunger. NNT is located on the east side of Indonesia which has a dry climate. This dry climate somehow leads to drought in NTT. Drought makes it hard for people in NTT to have a clean water access.

In accordance with Global Hunger Index (GHI) in 2016, the level of hunger in Indonesia is still at a serious level, undernourishment reach 7,6%, child wasting reach 13,55 and child stunting reach 36,4%. Despite the GHI is still relatively high, it reach a lower level than in 2008. Based on the news above, we can see that hunger in Indonesia is still at a serious level even though it’s decreasing year by year. The main reason for hunger is poverty. There’s still a lot of people who suffers poverty which makes them can’t afford to fulfill their basic needs, such as clean water, nutritious food and education.

The Government Roles in Reducing Hunger

Hunger is one of the biggest concern in Indonesia. Even though hunger is a huge problem, it can be overcome little by little. Hunger is a solvable problem, the key to overcome this problem is a good coordination between the government and the people itself. Government has the biggest role in reducing hunger. There’s a lot of effort that can be done to reduce hunger, such as giving subsidy to farmers so that they can produce high quality food in large quantities. It is expected to increase food production and also farmers’ income. If the farmers’ income are increasing, they can afford to fulfill their daily needs. Subsidy is important since Indonesian’s farmers are known to live below the line, which means a lot of them are suffering from poverty. With this subsidy, the farmers can produce high quality food that can be high valued so later they can afford nutritious food for their families.

Other than subsidy for farmers, government can also take action in education sector. There’s still a lot of people in Indonesia who doesn’t have an access to education. Lack of education makes people can’t have a decent job to support their lives. With a world that’s always moving forward, education become the most important thing. Those who are educated can have a job that can support their lives. In improving education sector, the government can start from village to village. Villages have a huge role in food production and livestocks. The education that’s given to the villagers doesn’t have to a formal one, it can be farming education or livestock education.

About improving education sector, the government already have a program called Bantuan Operasional Sekolah (BOS). BOS is a government program that provide school funds for elementary school and junior high school as a accomplishment of 9-year compulsory education. This program should be expended and optimalized to improve the education in Indonesia. Other than subsidy for farmers and improving education sector, the government should stabilize the markets using a price ceiling scheme. A price ceiling is a government imposed price control or limit on how high a price is charged for a product or in this case for a food. If the price on the markets are too high, the middle to lower class cannot afford to buy nutritious food. This situation force them to lower the standard of their food, lower the qualities and quantities which leads them to buy less nutritious food on the market.

For example, when the chicken’s price is at Rp50.000,00 to Rp60.000,00, not everyone can afford it so they choose to bought a cheaper one which has a lower quality compared to the normal chicken on the market. This low quality chicken may not have the same nutrition as the normal chicken and may cause several disease for those who consumed this chicken. Based on this example, we know that it’s very important for the government to control the price on the market so that everyone can afford to buy a nutritious food. .

Hunger in Pancasila Point of View

Pancasila is Indonesia’s ideology which concists of two Sanskrit words, the first one is “panca” means five and the second one is “sila” means principles. Pancasila has five principles that was taken from the cultural values of Indonesia’s ancestors. Based on those principles, it can be inferred that from the very start, people of Indonesia uphold the values of divine, humanity, unity, democracy and social justice. Even though there’s Pancasila with its five principles, it doesn’t change the fact that there’s a lot of injustice happening in Indonesia. Corruption is one of the example of injustice. The injustice that’s happening in Indonesia, especially corruption have a big impact on those who are not wealthy enough. There’s a lot of problem that’s being caused by injustice, such as hunger.

Hunger is a violent for human rights. As a human being, people have the right to fulfill their needs. In this case, human need food in order to survive. It is very unfair that while some people are suffering hunger, a lot food is being wasted by those who are wealthy. We can take a lot from the values of Pancasila to overcome this problem, such as from the third principle “the unity of Indonesia.” The people of Indonesia have to unite in order to help those in need without looking at their social class or race.

To help those in need, we can start from our neighbourhood. According to Pikiran Rakyat, the people in Karyamekar Village, Purwakarta has been doing social work called ‘beras perelek’ for the past years. Every household in this village hang bamboo on the outside wall of their houses as a container for rice. The villagers filled the bamboo with rice everyday and in the nighttime the rice is taken by the patrol officer so he can give the rice to the people that cannot afford to buy rices. The example above shows us that we can do little thing to help people starting from our own neighbourhood. Every action that we make to help people, even if we’re just doing little things, it did matters and can bring big impact to the people that we help.

Based on the analysis above, we know that hunger is a serious problem that needs to be taken care of. Hunger is more than just a stomach problem, it usually refer to malnutrition and undernourishment. The main cause of hunger is poverty because those who suffer poverty cannot afford to buy nutritious food, which is what we need on a daily basis. There’s a lot of thing we can do to overcome hunger, such as give to those in need. But giving free food won’t reduce hunger, it simply just making a person’s life better for one day. It doesn’t do anything for long term need. We cannot overcome hunger by ourselves, but the government with our help can. The government has the biggest role in overcoming hunger. The government can stabilize the market by controlling the price ceiling. With a stable market, it is possible to overcome hunger. Other than stabilize the market, the government can also give subsidy for the farmers and last but not least is to improve the education sector. From Pancasila point of view, as a writer I can conclude that the injustice that’s happening in Indonesia is one of the main reason for hunger. To overcome hunger, we must implement the values of Pancasila in our daily live and not take the values of Pancasila lightly.