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National Food Security and Caste: Let us not fail at it again
2017
Food security, in its very loose sense is defined according to the Food and Agriculture organisation. FAO security as defines food a “society where all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life (FAO. 2008).The definition misses many points; applicability to Indian society is one of the main. There are studies (Ghosh. 2010, Vyas. 2000) that tell food insecurity in India is not just related to unavailability of food to mass sections of the society, but there are other issues that also get reflected directly in this food insecurity problem of India. Why is food security an issue in this country?
Caste Discrimination and Food Security Programmes
Economic and Political Weekly, 2005
The findings of a survey in select states conducted in 2003 expose the patterns of exclusion and caste discrimination that afflict the government’s mid-day meal scheme and public distribution system. This article investigates dalit participation in these programmes and also measures aspects of physical access, participatory empowerment and community-level access.
The Poor's Food Insecurity in India
This paper probes into food insecurity that the poor across the country are burdened with. Food-insecure people are those individuals whose food intake constantly falls below the minimum calorie (energy) requirements. The availability of food grains through the PDS is examined, followed by an investigation of the poor's accessibility to the food grains that policy promises to make available for them. By citing various findings and comments by experts, the severity of the food insecurity is emphasized. The paper covers issues like: (1) Ration Cards (the inadequacy of the food provision programme is delved into); (2) PDS Coverage (the debate between the universalization of and the targeting of the PDS is deliberated upon); (3) Accessibility (the food coupons / stamp as an integral part of the PDS is reviewed); and (4) Systemic (the various logistical and policy shortcomings of the PDS per se are investigated). Given the current neo-liberal orientation of the country's policies, this paper then reviews the inclusive development potential of the food security programme to empower the poor, while building collateral capacity.
2014
Outcomes: Improved Food Security • Since the early 2000s Chhattisgarh has experienced major public investment, combining national programmes with initiatives of the state government. This has included significant expansion of roads and schooling, but it is the turnaround in social protection that is most marked. • Where hunger was commonplace ten years ago, fewer than 10% of people say they had to go hungry over the previous twelve months. • 80% of respondents have ration cards and almost all of these are getting their full entitlement of Public Distribution System (PDS) rice. 49% have worked under the rural employment guarantee scheme (MGNREGS) in the past year and most received the right pay for the right number of days. • Wage rates in the private sector have also increased, shifting the terms of exchange between employers and workers. • Some challenges continue: a residual 20% have no ration card and these are predominantly poorer people; MGNREGS payments are frequently delayed and the fact that payment is not available on a daily basis leads some poor to self-exclude. • While there are some signs of progress, marked inequalities by gender remain. Process: Government Commitment and Popular Mobilisation • The successful delivery of social protection is achieved through a combination of government commitment from above and popular mobilisation from below. 1 The term 'Adivasi' means indigenous person. It refers mainly to those termed 'Scheduled Tribe' in colonial times. It is preferred as giving a common identity and overcoming the pejorative associations of 'tribal'. 'Scheduled Tribe', like 'Other Backward Caste' and 'Scheduled Caste' remain Indian census categories.
Food Insecurity among Dalit Communities in India: Searching the Root Causes and Dimensions
This article examines how the definition of food security has evolved over the years to till date and the causes of food insecurity. It looks at the state of food insecurity in India's Dalit communities. The paper tried to identify the main causes of the widespread of food insecurity that prevails in India and it analyzed how to linked food insecurity issue with pubic stockholding in the WTO's Agreement of Agriculture is one of the key issues being discussed. It indicates that the Scheduled caste (Dalit) groups remain the poorest among the social groups, belonging to agricultural labourer, day labourer and casual labour are the worst sufferers. Thus the problem of insecurity in India is not of general systematic failure that arises due to supply shortage. It is problems where certain sector mainly marginalized population in the rural agrarian sector and urban informal sectors suffer from a shortage a food in a general climate of increasing production. Delving deeper, we observe the main determinates of food insecurity in India in today is shrinking of agrarian population incomes related to productions which are depending on due to policy framework and implication is conducted by international institutions indirectly. Finally, it examines government's balancing policy between national food security act and international institution WTO's 'agreement of agriculture policy' on the behalf of Indian marginalized people who are mostly belong to Dalit communities.
Using data that surveys sample households in the tribal area of rural Gujarat known as the Panchmahaals-Dahod and a non-tribal sample from Maliya and Jasdan in the Rajkot district of Saurashtra, we find the prevalence of large-scale food insecurity with less than 10 per cent of the population surveyed found to be food secure all 12 months in a year. A staggering 73.66 per cent (Panchmahaals) are found to be food insecure for more than six months in a year. The corresponding figure for Rajkot sample stands at approximately 19 per cent. This food insecurity is seen to be roughly consistent across poverty classification categories with similar distributions of food deprivation across both above poverty line and below poverty line households in our sample. Finally, the unavailability of food is found to be a seasonal phenomenon with unavailability peaking over the summer and monsoon and dropping off right before the winter months. SUJOY CHAKRAVARTY, SEJAL A DAND terms making it difficult in many cases to sustain a livelihood and obtain the basic necessities including food (see Section II). Furthermore, the disparity between urban and rural incomes has increased over time. This coupled with the uncertainties of primarily rain-fed agriculture has increased the incidence of migration to urban areas and a growth in the informal sector [DFID 2004]. However, very few migrants are able to obtain the relatively high wage jobs due to the large size of the urban casual labour pool and end up in conditions that are as adverse as in their rural subsistence livelihoods. We describe the food insecurity problem in Gujarat in detail in Section IV before we discuss the specific population sample we used and the results from our survey (Sections VI and VII). Finally, we present our conclusions and some specific prescriptions that we feel will help the government of Gujarat design better policies to combat food insecurity. We now look at the larger problem of food security in India and its causes with a specific focus on tribal populations.
Looking for Answers to the Food Security Problem: India under Current Compulsions
2006
Food insecurity at the household level has become unacceptable in India where the economy is growing at high rates and food sufficiency is already achieved at the macro-level. Food security has always been an important issue in the Indian political economy and was addressed by numerous poverty-eradication and rural development programmes that emerged and evolved with time. In recent times of liberalization, the programmes are intended to be more targeted and integrated with other social objectives through innovative designing. In particular, the government is all set to using public works programme, which is nothing new to India or other developing countries, as a nationwide instrument to confer earning opportunity to rural people backed by legal reinforcement. This paper reviews the strategies and instruments in India that impinge on household food insecurity. The paper also examines how far the existing public works programmes in select four states target the households that are likely to be food insecure.
The study examines impact of food security and its impact on nutritional status of Dalit women in Kolar district. It looks at the state of food insecurity among Dalit Household. Descriptive research design was adopted with purposive sampling technique. The total number of Sample covered 108 respondents from Kolar district. The data was computed by applying simple statistical percentage method. The study found majority of them are below poverty line. 58% of the respondents were severely malnourished. 72% of the respondents were deprived of adequate food which manifest has food insecurity among the Dalit households. It was concluded that poor socio-economic condition and food insecurity problem are the two major causes for low malnutrition status among the Dalit households. The present study strongly recommends designing wide-ranging programmes instead of uniform programmes, because socially excluded groups are highly heterogeneous and requires special policies and programmes separately. Otherwise combating the malnutrition problem among these vulnerable groups would be harder.