By Bhaswati Sengupta

“In the survey by the Right to Food Campaign, when we asked people when was the last time they purchased oil, many said that they couldn’t even afford oil. They said they were preparing their masalas in water. When we asked people how much dal they consumed and which dal was their favourite, one woman told me that it was just a handful of dal and the rest was water. We really feel that the problem of hunger is skyrocketing in our country, and this is one issue that needs immediate redressal,” says Amrita Johri, a member of the Right to Food Campaign.

https://youtu.be/JTEte2szSUU Amrita Johri, a member of the Right to Food Campaign, speaks to The Probe on food insecurity in India.

In a survey conducted by the Right to Food Campaign, it was found that food insecurity in India has risen post-Covid-19, and the marginalised sections were increasingly facing hunger. “We have the Consumer Expenditure Survey, which shows how much our households consume. Unfortunately, in the latest round of 2017-18, the government did not publish it, saying there were some methodological issues. Now one would expect the government to sort the issues, revise and redo the survey and publish it again. But the government has still not done it. The Right to Food Campaign undertook the hunger survey, and we did two rounds. It has shown that 41 per cent of the families we interviewed faced both quantity and quality related problems, and they seemed much worse off than they were during the pre-Covid times,” adds Johri.

Dr Vandana Prasad, public health expert and Founder Member of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, says the government’s various outreach schemes are not percolating to those deserving as the poor in the country still don’t have complete ration coverage.

“Many ration cards have not been made because we are still going by the population figures of the 2011 census. There are many loopholes in the implementation of the ration card scheme. Many people are not getting food. There are delays.

To read the full story https://theprobe.in/food-insecurity-skyrocketing-in-india-say-experts-and-rights-activists/