More Evidence of India’s Food Insecurity

Context: State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report shows that India has the largest population of food insecure people. 

Measuring food insecurity:

• The SOFI report presents the most authoritative evaluation of food insecurity in the world. It presents two key measures of food insecurity: 

• Prevalence of Undernourishment (PoU)

• Measures deficiency of calories
• It is often based on outdated data provided by national surveys 

• Prevalence of Moderate and Severe Food Insecurity (PMSFI).

• Comprehensive estimate: as it measures access to adequate and nutritious food.
• Based on annual surveys that collect information on experiences of food insecurity, such as food shortages and meal skipping.
• Uses the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), a gold standard in food security measurement developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
• Ease of data collection: has led to its wide adoption

• Both PoU and PMSFI are globally accepted indicators of progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Target 2.1 to end hunger and food insecurity. 

Food Insecurity in India

• Prevalence 

• India accounts for around 22% of the global burden: the highest for any country. 
• Approx. 32% of India’s population (2017-19) suffers from moderate or severe food insecurity (it was 27.8% in 2014-16)
• The number of food-insecure people grew by around 6 crores, in the past five years (2014-19).
• During 2014-19, PMSFI for India increased by 3.7 percentage points but it fell by 0.5 percentage points in the rest of South Asia.

• Causes

• Economic distress aggravated by demonetisation and Goods and Services Tax (GST). 
• Deepening agrarian crisis.
• Falling investments across sectors.
• Shrinking employment opportunities.

• PLFS data: unemployment rates in recent years have been higher than in the last four decades.

• Issues with food insecurity estimations in India:

• FIES and FAO-GWP: India neither conducts official FIES surveys nor accepts estimates based on FAO-GWP surveys. Consequently, estimates of PMSFI for India are not published in SOFI.
• NSSO data: India has not released the latest National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) consumption expenditure survey data for 2017-18. 
• PoU estimates: Withholding of consumption survey data has meant that SOFI continues to use outdated data making PoU estimates for India untenable.

Conclusion: The COVID-19 pandemic has brought renewed focus on food insecurity due to sudden loss of livelihoods. India should conduct a national survey to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food security.