Question

Apart from rural and urban areas, which other sections of society faces the problem of food insecurity???

please help me.

Answer 1

Food Insecurity among Dalit Communities

Historically, India’s Dalit populations were prosperous and enjoyed the fruits of the nature. Due to their own indigenous culture, they find it difficulty in intermingling with the general population in India. Through the successive government’s intervention and deforestation led to the disintegration of the Dalit culture which directly threatened their subsistence. They were further marginalized in the society and mostly served as the group D job in the government sector, house maids, agricultural labourers, day labourers, etc. Successive census data reveals that although the literary rate has been increased, but it is still below compared to other communities in India. Literacy rate, per capita rate, etc. were also low among the Dalit in, West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, etc compared to Dalits in other belts like north eastern states. Government’s subsequent policy intervention could not change drastically the life pattern of the Dalit particularly providing two square mills in a day or putting their children in the school. The existence of this problem is not merely confined to rural areas but also extend to urban region. To combat this perennial problem, Government did introduce some major programme such as Public food distribution system (PDS), the Integrated Child Development System (ICDS), Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGS), Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY)5 etc. [4]. This major programme fails to penetrate in every section of the society and hunger continues to thrive among the poor people. The disappointment in the failure of this programme can mainly be attributed to the prevalence of inequality among the society, unsuccessful delivery of public services, pathetic liability system and infringement in the implementation of pro-poor policies6. This is mainly due to lack of improvement in agricultural productivity owing to inadequate resources and markets needed to obtain agricultural stability. An agrarian crisis is currently being unleashed in India and it has a variety of causes, the prominent being the huge cut in government’s development expenditure in the nineties, particularly in rural areas. Following the adoption of structural adjustment policies from the early 1990s, the focus was shifted on expenditure reduction. As against an average of 3.8 per cent of the country’s Net National Product (NNP) spent on rural development per year during the seventh plan period 1985 – 90, the share of spending on rural development was down to 1.9 per cent of NNP in 2000 – 01 and rose only to 2.5 per cent in 2008 – 09. This adversely affected the availability and expansion of irrigation facilities, improvement in agricultural technology and overall food grain output. Lack of education and job opportunities in rural areas have further added to the problems. Climate change too, has an impact on the agricultural productivity, which affects the availability of food items and thus, food security. Major impact of climate change is on rain fed crops, other than rice and wheat7. For the tribal communities, habitation in remote difficult terrains and practice of subsistence farming has led to significant economic backwardness. The key issue which catalyzes the problem of food insecurity in urban areas and needs to be addressed is the large proportion of informal workforce resulting in unplanned growth of slums which lack in the basic health and hygiene facilities.