Report on the State of Food Insecurity in Urban India, 2010 - M. S. ...

REPORT ON THE STATE OF FOOD INSECURITY IN URBAN INDIA
health care system. The town panchayats come under the service area of primary health centres
and the health subcentres under them. Municipalities (including corporations) with population
exceeding 100,000 are covered under national programmes like the India Population Project
and its successors. So, there is need for a special focus on the smaller towns and municipalities
in the National Urban Health Mission.
There are some general points to be kept in mind. JNNURM and other urban development/
urban poverty alleviation programmes tend to emphasise the urban unit as a whole, which
de facto means privileging the more affluent sections of the urban population. It is important
to focus urban interventions in JNNURM and other programmes on the needs of small and
medium towns and on the needs of urban slums in all cities, taking care to address the needs
of the poor with regard to shelter, water, sanitation, drainage and nutrition education. It is a
matter of political will that adequate resources be found through the regular fiscal mechanisms
to undertake the necessary infrastructure investments in urban areas that address these basic
needs. It is also important to ensure that PDS, ICDS and MDMS reach the poor effectively.
The elected urban local bodies need to be invested with both power and responsibility for
designing and implementing all food and nutrition programmes, and provided the necessary
financial support by the higher levels of government, especially the Central government.
To ensure effective devolution, the capabilities of local bodies need to be strengthened
considerably through appropriate programmes of capacity building. Elected urban local bodies
could be encouraged to involve local communities in promoting hygiene and sanitation, with
the voluntary support of the numerous community organisations working on these issues.
Education, social mobilisation and regulation will all be needed.
A Nutrition Literacy Movement should be launched and home gardens promoted, wherever
this is feasible, based on the principle of finding a horticultural remedy for every nutritional
malady (with particular reference to micronutrient deficiencies).
Based on the recent experience with food prices inflation, it will be desirable to promote
consumer cooperatives in urban areas to minimise the very wide gap between wholesale and
retail prices. Consumer cooperatives can be a supplement to fair price shops.
The minimum support price announced for a number of crops is being implemented only in the
case of wheat and rice. It is necessary to broaden the food basket by including nutritious millets,
legumes and tubers. Providing appropriate remunerative prices for these crops will help expand
their production PDS can cover other nutritious foods, in addition to basic staples.
The need to link nutrition with disease management is particularly important in cases like
tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, leprosy, etc., where a drug-based approach alone will not help to cure
the patient. A food-cum-drug based approach will be important.
Finally, urban food security is not a matter of urban policy alone. It is bound up with the urban
economic structure characterised by a high degree of inequality and also with the impact of
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