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

CHAPTER 2
Dimensions of Food Insecurity
in Urban India
The concept of food insecurity is
multidimensional in nature and is determined by a
whole range of factors such as domestic production
of food, import and export of food, purchasing
power of people to access food as well as factors
that influence absorption of food in the body. The
different elements that influence food security can
be classified into three broad dimensions – food
availability, food access and food absorption. In
this chapter some key issues pertaining to food
insecurity in urban areas across the major States of
India are discussed. Analysing the status of food
insecurity across different States would indicate
variation in the nature of food insecurity concerns
among them. Aspects relating to food access would
be a more important problem for urban households
in some States while lack of basic amenities that
affect food absorption would be more crucial in
others. Thus, classifying the problem of food
insecurity into different dimensions would not only
help in a better understanding of the complexity but
will also aid in identifying appropriate interventions
to address the situation. However, it is difficult
to arrive at a measure of food availability across
States given the difficulty in collection of data on
net import of grain into a State on private account
as well as changes in the amount of privately held
stocks. Therefore, the discussion in this chapter
essentially relates to the other dimensions of food
security, namely, aspects pertaining to food access
and absorption as well as the nutritional status of
the population.
Before entering into a discussion on urban
food insecurity, it is important to consider the
broad pattern of urbanisation experienced by the
country 6 . Urbanisation is the process whereby
larger proportions of population live in urban
areas. In any country, the specific manner in which
the process of urbanisation comes about is related
to the nature of the overall development process
experienced by that country. Table 2.1 indicates
the salient features of urbanisation across the major
States of India. The overall level of urbanisation
in the country was about 28 per cent in 2001.
Given that the process of development is uneven
across the country, the patterns of urbanisation
are also not uniform. Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra
and Gujarat have had more than one-third of their
population living in urban areas in 1991 as well as
2001, while in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar
Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa and Assam this proportion
was less than one-fourth. Town density, a measure
of the spread of urbanisation, indicates that the
urban spread was relatively better in Tamil Nadu,
the Punjab and Haryana while it was very low
in Orissa and Rajasthan. From 1991 to 2001, the
annual population growth rate in urban areas in
6 Considering that the latest data available is from the Census of India 2001, this section largely relies on the Food Insecurity Atlas of Urban
India (FIAUI) (MSSRF-WFP 2002).