It used to be that when I saw the World Food Programme in the news, I thought of it as the first line of defense against famine. In Gaza, in Sudan, in Somalia, WFP appeared wherever it was needed, disbursing essential meals to the hungry and vulnerable.

But over my summer communications fellowship with the WFP office in New Delhi, I realized that the international organization’s work went far beyond what I’d seen in grim headlines. Yes, WFP is a lifeline to countries struggling with crises around the world. But I learned from Parvinder Singh, the office’s head of communications and media, that WFP also helps countries overcome the structural issues that cause hunger. For example, as India has transformed from a net recipient of WFP aid to one of the international organization’s most important donors, WFP has assisted the country with improving its social safety net and providing food aid to the region. My job was to help WFP tell this story to Indians, Americans, and the rest of the world.

In the years after independence, India struggled to produce enough food for its fast-growing population. Between 1950 and 1971, the country had to purchase 45 million metric tons of food from the United States—$10 billion worth—to feed its people. Following a pair of droughts in the 1960s, for instance, the U.S. had to give India five million metric tons of wheat.

India recognized that it couldn’t rely on imports forever, so the country devised a strategy for attaining self-sufficiency. In 1965, the Indian Agricultural Research Institute launched the All India Coordinated Wheat Improvement Project to address the shortage. The program introduced high-yielding varieties of wheat to India, increasing production. Over the ensuing decades, Indian leaders added other improvements, mechanizing farming in food-producing states such as Haryana and Punjab and employing scientists to provide region-specific advice to farmers.

Following what Indians call the Green Revolution, wheat crises largely became a thing of the past. India’s wheat production jumped from 20 million metric tons in 1970 to 32 million in 1980. For the last five years, the country has produced an average of 99 million metric tons.

India’s changing relationship with WFP has reflected this evolution. When the international organization started working in India in 1963, it focused on providing humanitarian aid. In more recent decades, however, WFP has pivoted to offering technical assistance, advising India — now self-sufficient in wheat production — on how best to distribute domestic food aid.

As a communications fellow, I wrote about these collaborations. I drafted an article on how WFP has advised India on improving its Take-Home Rations (THR) program, which provides nutrient-fortified food to children, pregnant women, and lactating mothers. For example, WFP partnered with the government think tank NITI Aayog to outline THR best practices.

But the story I found most interesting — and the one that Parvinder, my supervisor, was most eager to tell — was how India is now giving back to WFP. As recently as 2000, India was still a net recipient of WFP aid. But the country began stepping up its donations to WFP in the early 2000s. In 2002, India committed 1 million metric tons of wheat to Afghanistan, at the time the largest single donation in WFP history. By 2005, as India’s wheat production continued to grow, the country had become WFP’s 15th largest donor.

But India has perhaps the most to offer as a role model. In 2013, the country passed the National Food Safety Act (NFSA), which aimed to provide food to two-thirds of the Indian population. Yet the law went beyond mere welfare spending, framing food as a human right.

WFP has hailed the law as a critical aspect of India’s “positive policy environment” for food security. In 2022, WFP brought officials from Nepal to meet their Indian counterparts and study the NFSA and the story of the Green Revolution. Last year, India’s bilateral aid agency then partnered with WFP to provide fortified rice to its Nepali neighbors. This story too I wrote about, as an example of what other countries with a food surplus could learn from India.

So yes, WFP helps countries and territories in crisis, such as Gaza, Sudan, and Somalia. This function is essential. But it also provides a critical service by helping countries that have overcome crises on their own—such as India—reinforce their social safety net and assist their neighbors. Telling this story was the most important part of my fellowship.

Though I’ve left WFP to return to my Master of Public Policy program at Yale University, I plan to keep sharing the story of India and WFP well into the future.