WUNRN
Women's Feature Service
Ultimately food security is not just about delivering
food grain to families so that they have something edible on a plate. It is
also about putting social change and gender equality on the table.
By Pamela Philipose
Food security needs to be defined more broadly, with the
focus firmly on women. (Credit: Manipadma Jena\WFS)
Indian literature is
replete with descriptions of hunger because it has been a constant guest in
many a home, leaving its cursed footprint on people’s lives in marked and
tragic way.
The National Advisory
Council, headed by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, has just recommended that
households in India’s poorest districts get 35 kilograms of food grain every
month at Rs 3 (US$1=Rs 46.7). The move comes as a reminder that at the heart of
Visit the cavernous
maternity wards of Mahila Chikitsalaya, a public hospital just off Jaipur’s
Sanganeri Gate, to understand this better. Here lie innumerable pale-faced
women, many of them not yet 20, with their tiny, mewling newborns. A
significant proportion of these babies are unlikely to survive their fifth
year. This is a scene that is repeated in public hospitals all across
Explains Dr A.K.
Shiva Kumar, noted development economist and member of the National Advisory
Council, “The extremely high proportion of low birth weight babies born in
The urgency of the
issue cannot be emphasised enough. Chris Chalmers, Acting Head, DFID India,
which is working with the governments of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa and West
Bengal to address malnourishment, puts it this way, “Four in 10 Indian children
are malnourished, and are therefore likely to have poor health, do worse in
school and earn less in later life. This is not just about eradicating hunger.
It’s about ensuring a good quality diet that allows children to grow and lead
productive lives.”
As early as in 1974,
The Status of Women Committee Report - the first attempt by the Indian
government to review the position of women – expressly recognised that hunger
in
Nothing, in fact,
symbolises women’s poor status within the family and lack of personal
entitlement more eloquently than that paltry meal of rice gruel or a dry
‘chapati’ (whole wheat Indian bread) they get to have after everybody in the
household has eaten. That they get only this is not surprising given that a
large proportion of women are denied opportunities to develop themselves, both
physically and mentally. As children, saddled with domestic responsibilities,
including the care of siblings, they have no role in making the decisions that
shape their future, whether it is going to school, getting better health care,
or entering into marriage. An estimated 45 per cent of women marry before they
are 18, the statutory minimum age of marriage.
Access to education
could have changed this picture. Not only would it have delayed the age of
marriage, it would have enhanced greatly the chance of an independent wage,
which would in turn have helped raise standards of family income and nutrition.
The lack of women’s
bargaining power within the household also stems from the fact that they have
little economic independence. While 80 per cent of
What then is the way
forward? First, the issue of food security and nutrition has to become part of
everyday discourse. After all, it was only when a writ petition in the Supreme
Court on the right of every Indian to be free of hunger was filed in 2001, did
an issue that directly impacts two-thirds of the country’s population even
figure as a public issue. Today, we have a Food Security Bill awaiting
enactment thanks to those earlier efforts.
But distributing food
grain is only one part of the hunger story. This brings us to the second point:
If legislation on food security has to be effective, it needs to move towards
addressing the issue of adequate nutrition, so that people get food that does
not merely satiate their hunger but nourishes them.
Third, the focus has
to be firmly on women. Not only does their malnutrition impact on the health
and well-being of future generations, women are also directly responsible for
feeding and caring for families, especially children. Food security should,
therefore, also mean a more equal gender friendly domestic and work
environment.
Ironically, while
caring for children continues to be widely regarded as a woman’s duty, working
mothers face many childcare dilemmas. When family finances run low, female
employees are sometimes forced to come back to work even two weeks after they
have had their child and weaning is abrupt. Not only is the infant deprived of
its mother’s milk, the mother herself has little time to recoup after
childbirth. So while everybody recognises that breastfeeding is vital for an
infant’s nutrition, there is very little policy-making on how this can be
ensured while protecting the rights and welfare of the mother. Similarly, there
is very little thinking on how fathers could be better involved in child caring
and nutrition.
According to Dr
Vrinda Datta at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, the situation is
no different in rural
Ultimately food
security is not just about delivering food grain to families so that they have
something edible on a plate. It is also about putting social change and gender
equality on the table.