publications

S. Irudaya Rajan,U.S. Mishra

There needs to be a transformation of India’s agri-food system, ensuring that healthy diets are available and affordable for all. Ending hunger, food insecurity and any form of malnutrition is one of the Sustainable Development Goals set to be realised by 2030. Such a goal is far removed from its realisation given rising conflicts, climate vulnerability and extremes as well as economic slowdown in regions that remain vulnerable and food deficient.

Food insecurity and malnutrition are a manifestation of a lack of access to and the unaffordability of healthy diets. In fact, food sufficiency serves as a pre-requisite to address hunger. But for a nation to be food sufficient, it needs to have an ideal distributional mechanism that ensures universal access to food that is affordable. Further, adequate food does not necessarily imply balanced food intake with all required nutrients to address the concern of malnourishment. Hence, a transformation from a hunger-free environment to a nutritionally compliant one needs to take into account the unaffordability of healthy diets, unhealthy food intakes and their underlying inequalities across the population segment. Read more at