Community Development Journal Advance Access published online on June 3, 2009
Community Development Journal, doi:10.1093/cdj/bsp025
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Food security in perspective: significance of social action
Address for correspondence: Dr Manish K. Jha, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, V. N. Purav Marg, Deonar, Mumbai 400 088, India; email: manishj{at}tiss.edu
This article highlights the impact of food insecurity on the disadvantaged sections in India. While analysing the causes and consequences of food insecurity, this paper emphasizes distributional aspects and also examines the government schemes and provisions meant to secure food for the vulnerable sections of the society. Discussing the gross mismanagement and the serious loopholes in the implementation of these programmes, this paper highlights consequences which include growing number of malnourished children and recurring instances of hunger deaths. The government's initiatives of dealing with food insecurity reflect its failure to grasp the realities of exclusion faced by the marginalized communities. Paradoxically, while the food surplus statistics indicate an upward shift, so do starvation deaths in different parts of the country. The last section reiterates and illustrates the argument of this paper that the food security can be ensured through collective mobilization and sustained social action. The paper advocates the need to initiate public action through community mobilization. Some of the vibrant and robust civil society groups have taken the lead in enabling marginalized communities to assert their rights and entitlements in different parts of India. This has been substantiated through case illustration of grassroots mobilization and social action.