Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 Introduction: A Critical Look at Two Decades of Market Reform in India
- Chapter 2 Development Planning and the Interventionist State versus Liberalization and the Neoliberal State: India, 1989–1996
- Chapter 3 Predatory Growth
- Chapter 4 On Some Currently Fashionable Propositions in Public Finance
- Chapter 5 The Costs of ‘Coupling’: The Global Crisis and the Indian Economy
- Chapter 6 Theorizing Food Security and Poverty in the Era of Economic Reforms
- Chapter 7 Globalization, the Middle Class and the Transformation of the Indian State in the New Economy
- Chapter 8 The World Trade Organization and its Impact on India
- Chapter 9 The Changing Employment Scenario during Market Reform and the Feminization of Distress in India
- Chapter 10 Privatization and Deregulation
- Chapter 11 Macroeconomic Impact of Public Sector Enterprises: Some Further Evidence
- 12 Liberalization, Demand and Indian Industrialization
- Chapter 13 On Fiscal Deficit, Interest Rate and Crowding-Out
- Chapter 14 Going, Going, But Not Yet Quite Gone: The Political Economy of the Indian Intermediate Classes during the Era of Liberalization
- Contributors
Chapter 6 - Theorizing Food Security and Poverty in the Era of Economic Reforms
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 Introduction: A Critical Look at Two Decades of Market Reform in India
- Chapter 2 Development Planning and the Interventionist State versus Liberalization and the Neoliberal State: India, 1989–1996
- Chapter 3 Predatory Growth
- Chapter 4 On Some Currently Fashionable Propositions in Public Finance
- Chapter 5 The Costs of ‘Coupling’: The Global Crisis and the Indian Economy
- Chapter 6 Theorizing Food Security and Poverty in the Era of Economic Reforms
- Chapter 7 Globalization, the Middle Class and the Transformation of the Indian State in the New Economy
- Chapter 8 The World Trade Organization and its Impact on India
- Chapter 9 The Changing Employment Scenario during Market Reform and the Feminization of Distress in India
- Chapter 10 Privatization and Deregulation
- Chapter 11 Macroeconomic Impact of Public Sector Enterprises: Some Further Evidence
- 12 Liberalization, Demand and Indian Industrialization
- Chapter 13 On Fiscal Deficit, Interest Rate and Crowding-Out
- Chapter 14 Going, Going, But Not Yet Quite Gone: The Political Economy of the Indian Intermediate Classes during the Era of Liberalization
- Contributors
Summary
Introduction
The correct theorizing of the questions of food security and poverty has become particularly important at the present time, which is one of rapid changes in the economic environment in which small producers including farmers and workers are living. In a poor developing country, the incidence of poverty is very closely linked to the availability of food, in which the staple foodgrains still remain predominant, accounting for three-fifths of the daily energy intake of the population. The measurement of poverty in India has traditionally adopted a nutritional norm specified in terms of an average daily energy intake measured in calories. The National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau has informed us that,
the NNMB has consistently confirmed in successive surveys that the main bottleneck in the dietaries of even the poorest Indians is energy and not protein as was hitherto believed […] the data also indicate that the measurement of consumption of cereals can be used as a proxy for total energy intake. This observation is of considerable significance as it helps to determine rapid, though approximate, estimates of energy intake at the household level.
(Krishnaswamy et al. 1997, emphasis added)It is this strong link between the staple foodgrains intake and poverty based on a nutritional norm which enables us to put forward an analysis of the recent trends in food security and in poverty, in light of the impact of changing economic policies during the last 15 years.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Two Decades of Market Reform in IndiaSome Dissenting Views, pp. 93 - 124Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2013