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Relevance of regional and rural-urban variations
While deciding the sample for this study, given our focus on the poor, we had consciously
decided to not only capture the inter-state variations, but also to include rural and urban
differences as well as Tribal and Muslim families in the sample. To this end, our research was
carried out three states with very different development trajectories, in districts that were ranked
similarly in relation to human development indicators, in rural and urban areas of the district, and
finally, we profiled one tribal village in Andhra Pradesh and selected one village and one urban
slum with significant Muslim population. There is no doubt that relatively better functioning of
healthcare, immunisation, child nutrition and primary schooling programmes in the two southern
states has made a difference in comparison to UP. However, despite the differences with respect
to availability of resources and provision of social services between states/regions, the also
indicates that at the micro-level there is little variation in the access to and utilisation of services
by the poor households. Poverty continues to exert a strong influence on nutrition of children, on
health seeking behaviour of households and most importantly on overall living standards.
Physical and environmental hygiene is also affected, increasing susceptibility of the very young
to preventable diseases. Incidence of indebtedness is high among the poor and unexpected health
emergencies are often identified as a significant cause for incurring debt leading to further
immiseration of the households.
Poverty and educational opportunities:
The level of poverty significantly impacting on food and nutrition security is closely related to
availability of work. Jha and Jhingran argue, ‘The issue of acute food shortage faced by poor
people in drought affected areas in the midst of gigantic ‘surplus’ food stocks rotting in godowns
has been an area of debate and discussion… What is important to point out in this respect is that
the poor do not face food insecurity only during drought or drought-like situations. In many
places, periodic food crises are an annual phenomenon, the intensity of the crisis and length of the
period increases during years of bad or no crop… Nearly one third of these families usually face a
food crisis for more than four months in a year, the rest go through this for about two-three
months’ (Jha and Jhingran, 2002). Non-availability of food is not a function of landlessness
alone, availability of wage labour in agriculture or non-farm work affects access to cash for food.
The notion of scarcity is also subjective and differs across economic groups. During ‘normal’
times, most poor (below poverty line families) eat less nutritious food than households above the
Educational Resource Unit Page 72 April 2003