Running Head: Food Insecurity 1

Food Insecurity in India

Eliu Figueroa

Arizona State University

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India is home to 195.9 million people who suffer from hunger, since India contains 1/8th

of the world’s population it is very alarming that such a large group of people suffer from food

insecurity due to the size of their population and underdeveloped technology. Despite the rising

obesity rates in India, food insecurity remains a major issue for India’s 195 million

undernourished people. Four out of every ten children are affected by India’s food insecurity

issues, resulting in substantial physiological and developmental delays despite the country’s 250

million ton annual grain production.

In 2014 a study concerning food insecurity in households was conducted in a colony in

South Delhi, India. The study used the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) to

retrieve data on 250 families and the factors associated with food insecurity. It was found that

out of the 250 families 72.2% of households were food insecure, 49.2% are mildly insecure and

18.8% were moderately insecure, and 9.2% being severely insecure. This study was done nearly

5 years ago and not much has been done to aid those who are food insecure, which means things

have either gotten worse or stayed the same. More often than not people move from rural areas to

more urban areas in search of better paying jobs, resulting in people settling for jobs that pay low

wages. Although in some cases people find good paying jobs the matter of the fact is food prices

continue to increase, especially in urban areas. When food prices increase it is to pay farmers

better wages but with that comes people who cannot afford to pay for the amount of food that is

needed for their family. In 1987-1988 the amount of food insecure households were 25%, in

2004-2005 the amount increased to 34%.

Recently it has been seen that the amount of obese people in India has began to

increase, along with the amount of people who are food insecure. Chatterjee stated in his journal
Running Head: Food Insecurity 3

that a report found that out of 5000 students in a private school 29% were overweight which is

1450 kids. Many might argue that how can their be food insecure people when clealry there is an

obesity problem, the matter of the fact is that food insecurity causes more harm tha obesity. The

same report found that children in urban areas, 35.6% were stunted and 15.4% were severely

stunted, that is a much bigger issue than obesity.