[ There are no nationwide numbers on the state of food insecurity in India, but recent studies point to an alarming problem. In the 2021 Global Hunger Index released in October, India ranked 101st of the 116 countries surveyed, falling seven spots from the previous year. In a separate 2020 survey by Azim Premji University in Bangalore, 90 percent of respondents reported a reduction in food intake due to the lockdown. Twenty percent of respondents continued to battle the problem even six months later.]
By Niha Masih
A day before, the last money she
had left was spent at the hospital where her husband had died after a brief
illness. In the commotion, she missed her daily pickup of the free meals handed
out by a local nonprofit.
“I felt gutted to feed them just
rice and chili,” 34-year-old Sonawane said. “But there was no choice.”
For more than 600 days — since
India’s first coronavirus lockdown in early 2020 — the Sonawane family has
depended on food aid. Even as the number of coronavirus cases has diminished,
another crisis has unfolded in homes across the country: With high unemployment
and a record contraction in the economy following two
nationwide lockdowns, families like the Sonawanes lost both their purchasing
power and savings and can now scarcely afford three meals a day.
There are no nationwide numbers on
the state of food insecurity in India, but recent studies point to an alarming
problem. In the 2021 Global Hunger Index released in October, India ranked
101st of the 116 countries surveyed, falling seven spots from the previous
year. In a separate 2020 survey by Azim Premji University in Bangalore, 90
percent of respondents reported a reduction in food intake due to the lockdown. Twenty
percent of respondents continued to battle the problem even six months later.
The Indian government dismissed the
Hunger Index ranking, saying that estimates used for the undernourished
population were “devoid
of ground reality” and that the report disregarded its “massive
effort” during the pandemic. Oxfam India, in a statement, said the Hunger Index
“unfortunately reflects the reality of the country where hunger [has been]
accentuated since the covid-19 pandemic.”
India’s Ministry of Food and Public
Distribution did not respond to requests for comment.
“The hunger crisis is, in fact,
fundamentally reflective of the livelihood crisis,” said Jayati Ghosh, a
development economist. People do not have money to buy food, she said, and
“that’s both our employment and food systems failing.”
The unemployment rate in April to
June of 2020, at the height of the first lockdown, was nearly 21 percent in urban areas, according to government
figures. Even as the economy showed signs of revival this year, 15 million jobs were lost in May when a devastating
second wave killed hundreds of thousands and brought the health-care system to
near collapse.
Nearly 80 percent of India’s workforce makes a living in the
informal sector, which economists say was the worst hit. The problem is more
pronounced in urban areas like Mumbai, where such workers subsist on their
daily income for survival and lack networks or resources such as agricultural
land in their home villages.
Sonawane’s work and life came to a
sudden halt with the two lockdowns. The five jobs she worked — cleaning and
cooking at upscale homes in the high-rise buildings visible from her cramped
shanty — disappeared immediately.
Her husband, who worked as a
delivery person for a gas company, stayed home. So did her three children,
including her youngest son, 7, who would repeatedly ask her in the early days
when school would reopen. Now, she said, he has forgotten much of what he
learned, as primary schools in the city have remained shut since
the initial closures in March 2020.
After the lockdowns were lifted,
Sonawane went back to work. But the world outside had changed.
Two of the families she worked for
had left the city, and another told her not to return over coronavirus
concerns. Her pre-pandemic income of $160 a month shrank by half. Her husband’s
company laid him off.
“We never had food shortages at
home” before this, Sonawane said. “We always earned enough to feed the family.”
Right to food
India’s food security law aims to
provide free or subsidized food grains to two-thirds of the country’s
population, making it the largest safety net in the country. But experts say
gaps, its reliance on biometric authentication and a narrow scope have hindered
its efficacy.
During the lockdown, the government
expanded benefits by providing an extra five kilograms (about 11 pounds) of
rice or wheat every month to those eligible, a program that was recently
extended to March 2022.
But economists say the law’s
coverage needs to account for the increase in population over the past decade,
which could bring an additional 100 million people under its purview.
Not far from Chembur, where
Sonawane lives, is the working-class neighborhood of Govandi, framed by the
country’s largest landfill. In one of the narrow streets is the home of
31-year-old Farhan Ahmad, a father of two, who worked as a driver and is one of
the millions of migrants who have fallen through the cracks in the food law.
The five years before the pandemic had
been good for Ahmad, who had moved to Mumbai from his village hoping to make a
life in the city.
Ahmad signed up to drive with Ola,
an Indian multinational ride-hailing company, when a friend lent him a car if
he agreed to pay back the loan on it. By the time the coronavirus arrived, he
had a small sum set aside in savings. He and his wife debated buying a
refrigerator.
“Forget about affording a fridge
now,” said Ahmad. “On most days I can’t buy enough food.”
On a recent evening, Ahmad’s wife,
Shama, rocked their 15-month-old daughter as she cried. It was yet another day
when they had not been able to buy milk for the baby. In his wallet, Ahmad had
less than half a dollar. His bank account was empty, and a mountain of debt
had steadily grown.
The car was gone because he was
unable to repay the loan. Now, he said, he was ready to work any job.
“But no jobs are available. There
are too many people like me,” he said.
[In
India, engineers and MBAs are turning to manual labor to survive the economic
crash]
For the first few months of the
lockdown, Ahmad’s family ate meals supplied by a local activist, then subsisted
on ration kits supplied by another group, which stopped in July.
Since then, Ahmad has relied on his
relatives for help with food and money. The family’s diet no longer
includes fruit, eggs or meat — items that were once a staple. Twice a week,
they buy vegetables. On other days, they eat rice or flatbread with garlic
chutney.
And yet India’s food grain stocks
are currently nearly three times more than the normal reserve, a paradox that
Ghosh, the economist, said was impossible to explain.
She said the government must
immediately provide rations to everyone in need, expand the commodities given
out, and increase spending on programs guaranteeing employment and pensions.
“None of this is an act of God that
one cannot do something about,” she said.
The road ahead
The long-term implications of food
insecurity are grave. Varna Sri Raman, a researcher at Oxfam India, said the
government’s own data from 2019-20 shows malnutrition among children rose,
reversing gains from five years ago.
“Not investing in food security is
like underinvesting in your people and your future workforce,” she said. “In
terms of policy, it’s very shortsighted.”
As critics slammed the government
for not stepping up, citizen-led initiatives moved to fill the gap. In Mumbai,
the Want Food collective began as a short-term arrangement to help stranded
migrant workers when the first lockdown was announced suddenly. But the demands
swelled and the collective began to provide meals to vulnerable communities
across the city — 6.6 million at last count.
The collective has funded two
women-led community kitchens in the city that are still operating.
Sujata Sawant, a local activist who
helped set up one of the kitchens in a suburban slum in Kurla, said the
community’s need has been always more than the help that poured in.
“The desperation for food in the
lockdowns was something I’ve never seen,” said Sawant, 43. In April, when they
began to cook and distribute meals themselves, “the lines were as long as the
eye could see,” Sawant recounted in her tiny office across from a defunct
railway line that cuts through the slum.
The number of people relying on
meals from the kitchen has fallen drastically, but they still cater nearly 800
packets every day, an indication of how hunger continues to stalk those on the
margins.
Sawant said she foresees another
six months before things improve — if another wave of the virus doesn’t hit.
On a recent afternoon, as Sonawane,
the domestic worker, returned home from work, she picked up two food packets
sent by Sawant’s team.
At home, her three children sat on
the stone floor for lunch.
She had cooked a local variety of
cheap beans that they would eat with stale flatbread from the previous day.
There was also some leftover rice and eggplant that her employer had shared.
The fridge was empty, aside from a present of a box of sweets from a festival
and a lump of butter.
“When the children ask for more
food, I have no answer,” she said. “I don’t know how we will keep going like
this.”
Sonawane carefully saved the day’s
food packets from the nonprofit — rice and lentils cooked together — for the
next meal.
Read more:
For India’s stranded workers, an impossible choice: Destitution
or a dangerous road home
In India, the world’s biggest lockdown has forced migrants to
walk hundreds of miles home
