Food Security Atlas Of RURAL MAHARASHTRA - WFP Remote ...

A statistical analysis of the NFHS–3 data across states reveals a significant negative correlationbetween micro-nutrient intake and proportion of underweight children and under-five mortality, implyingthereby that an increased intake of micronutrient, significantly reduces the risk of under-nutrition,which in turn, as discussed, contributes to reduction in under-five mortality (Table 3.1).It follows from the preceding discussions, that child under-nutrition status and mortality appear to bean overall outcome of nutritional and food insecurity. It, therefore, makes sense to form a combinedindex of these two indicators to compute an overall index of food security outcome in Maharashtra(see Table 3.2). Districts have been divided into five groups on the basis of this index – secure,moderately secure, moderately insecure, severely insecure, and extremely insecure – each categoryrepresenting the relative severity of the outcome of food insecurity (Table 3.2 and Map 3.1).Table 3.2: Food Security Outcome Index (FSOI) StatusSecure Moderately Moderately Severely ExtremelyDistrict Secure Insecure Insecure InsecureDistrict District District DistrictSindhudurg Satara Parbhani Bhandara NandurbarRatnagiri Thane Hingoli Gondiya ChandrapurKolhapur Aurangabad Nagpur GadchiroliPune Washim NandedOsmanabad Yavatmal WardhaRaigarh JalgaonSangli JalnaBid DhuleSolapur AmravatiAkola BuldanaAhmadnagarLaturNashikThe hill-forest districts of Nandurbar, Chandrapur and Gadchiroli fall in the extremely insecure category.Districts in the secure category are mostly from Western Maharashtra, including the coastal districts.But what is important to note is that almost all the districts of both Vidarbha and Marathwada fall withinthe insecure categories. There is a vast belt of the Deccan Plateau, the unirrigated districts of Vidarbhaand Marathwada that are among the worst-performing regions of Maharashtra in nutritional outcomes.3.2 Explaining Food SecurityTaking the child mortality and child malnutrition rates as the outcomes of food security, one couldrank districts on the basis of this index, as done above. If the objective of the exercise were merely24 FOOD SECURITY ATLAS OF RURAL MAHARASHTRA