My Junior year in high school I visited family in India for 10 days with my mother. While I had been warned of the socioeconomic difference between the United States and third world countries, I was not aware of how big of a shock it would be. For those who have seen the movie Slumdog Millionaire, I can assure you that the movie is not far from the truth. Besides the dirty living conditions, begging scheme, and uneven classes, one of the things that struck me as very shocking was the malnutrition of a high percentage of citizens, especially that of the lower class and homeless.
A new report released by World
Food Programme revealed that even with recent high economic growth rates in India, food security has not improved. Even since gains in the 1990's, "the number of undernourished people is rising...Slowing growth in food production, rising unemployment
and declining purchasing power of the poor in India are combining to weaken the
rural economy."
The article talks about the effectiveness of the a couple different food-based interventions to see if application to India would be effective. Professor Athreya concluded that “There is a need to create a universal PDS with uniform prices affordable to the poor and the allocation should be based on the number of consumption units in the household.” having access to programs that aid food security safety next and agricultural production will help decrease the problem.
The article defines food security as: "availability of food in the market, access to food through adequate purchasing power, and absorption of food in the body."
In general, South Asian has poor food security. Specifically, India ranks 94th in the Global Hunger Index of 119 countries. The reason, food and nutrition insecurity. Indian citizens often have minimal diets that consist of low nutrition foods. Besides this, most people living in India don't have easy access to safe drinking water or toilets.
Due to this class and my travels, I am becoming even more aware of the lack of food security in most parts of the world. Yet again, the question is: What to do about it?
-Marshelle S.
My brother was just there in December and had a similar experience. It is amazing the difference. There is such a gap in the classes. I wonder how much culture plays a part in a food insecurity. What I mean is the dominant religion of Hinduism forbids the eating of beef because the cow is considered sacred. I wonder how much the addition of the protein of beef would make a difference? Additionally, one of the biggest problems is all the people. How does a country feed that many people? Then enters another controversial issue: is the world over populated?
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