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Poverty norm or calorie norm? by Swarna S Vepa

Kerala and Tamil Nadu with the lowest calorie consumption seem to show better health outcome indicators

This report, a joint initiative by the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation — an institution with a remarkable long term commitment to issues related to food security — and the United Nations World Food Programme, should serve as an excellent hand book on urban food insecurity. Aside from providing all the relevant information in a consolidated fashion — something that is hard to come by in these days of information overload — it highlights the issues that are of critical importance. If its recommendations are meant for policymakers and those charged with the responsibility of formulating action-oriented programmes, the publication is no less useful for researchers in the field.

Access to livelihood

The introduction provides a contextual overview of urban India, while the concluding chapter gives a road map, indicating the way forward. Of the three core chapters, the first looks at some select aspects of livelihood access, such as access to basic amenities, food intake, and nutritional and health outcomes. The second is on selection of indicators and indexing, while the third discusses the status of the essential public food delivery services to the poverty groups in urban areas.

The main conclusion is that, going by the official data, there has been a slight improvement in the level of urban food security. But there is a caveat: the improvement could be due to an over-statement of progress on the sanitation and drinking water supply fronts.

The backward States such as Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh have shown improvement in the chosen indicators. All but Uttar Pradesh are at the bottom of the table in respect of food security. Urban Uttar Pradesh has recorded a substantial improvement in food security. It has fared better, even going by the index that does not include safe drinking water and sanitation. The States that slipped in performance are Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, and Madhya Pradesh.

On the nagging problem of rising food prices, the report roots for universal public distribution system (PDS), as distinguished from the targeted PDS, pointing out that it has the advantage of ‘self-selection', or a process of automatic exclusion — that is, those who, for various reasons, are not interested in getting supplies from the PDS will opt to keep out. Another promising initiative suggested for keeping the retail prices at an affordable level is the revival of urban consumer cooperation. Among the other recommendations that will be useful for policymakers are the ones related to implementing an urban employment guarantee scheme especially for greening and cleaning operations to supplement the job opportunities for the unskilled workers, and empowering the urban local bodies. To mention a few omissions, although minor, some aspects of urban insecurity — such as poverty, informal work, earning differentials, food prices, and slums — discussed (in the introductory chapter) at the all-India level; are not examined at the State level, nor have they found a place in the index. The index also does not include the public food delivery services under the three chosen programmes — the PDS, the Mid-Day Meal, and the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS). Relatively speaking, the southern States have the best of public delivery mechanisms. Kerala and Maharashtra, followed by Tamil Nadu, have better nutritional and health outcomes in terms of infant mortality rates. Another significant omission is a detailed analysis of the city-level data that are available in the National Sample Survey (NSS) reports. An earlier report on urban food security had such a discussion.

The introductory chapter provides information related to growth disorders and infant mortality in eight select cities. While it is the prerogative of the authors to choose what to highlight and what to underplay, one felt that a comprehensive city-level analysis would have served the purpose better and made the report more useful, given especially that the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) is seen as not focussing exclusively on urban lower income groups.

Poverty norm

The authors have rejected poverty as an indicator of food insecurity, following the well-known stand taken by many experts including Utsa Patnaik, that, while the official urban poverty declined from 33.2 per cent to 25.7 per cent between 1993-94 and 2004-05, the percentage of population consuming less than 2,100 kilocalories increased from 57 per cent to 64.5 per cent during the same period. Hence, they argue, measuring food insecurity in terms of calorie norm will be more appropriate.

The question is, can we abandon poverty norm altogether and replace it with calorie norm to measure food security? States such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu with the lowest calorie consumption of the bottom 30 per cent seem to show better health outcome indicators such as low infant mortality, lower growth disorders, and higher life expectancies. Lower poverty levels with better healthcare facilities lead to better health outcomes, despite lower calorie consumption. Moreover, what counts more is the quality of diet than the quantity. This is an obvious anomaly observed in the Indian data by several researchers for many years now, but it is yet to be resolved with better data sets.