Diversifying Indian diets - challenges and opportunities.

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (041) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rama Narayanan Rama Narayanan
Keyword(s):  
Distribution System ◽  
Fruits And Vegetables ◽  
Food Choices ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Distribution System ◽  
Life Styles ◽  
Balanced Diet ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Diet Survey ◽  
Farming Households

Abstract This review reiterates the lack of diversity in Indian diets, especially with regard to fruits, vegetables and pulses, resulting in a deficient intake of essential micro-nutrients. It also highlights the variations in nutrient intake across the life cycle determined by gender and other socioeconomic factors and life styles. It conceptualizes that issues of production, availability, affordable access, knowledge of nutrition and a balanced diet along with awareness be simultaneously addressed to help households to diversify diets. It suggests that a comprehensive district level quinquennial diet survey be undertaken across the country to help understand food choices, preferences and intake against the backdrop of existing policies. It postulates that adult nutrition literacy should take a problem-solving approach and address both men and women. Specific suggestions include increasing productivity of pulses, access to fruits and vegetables by way of better distribution and price control, support to farming households for production of food crops, diversifying the food basket in the public distribution system, increasing allocation for fruits and vegetables in direct feeding programmes and addressing the needs of adolescent boys in Government programmes.

Economic impact of initial period of lockdown in Kolkata and suburbs

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Bandana Sen ◽  
Aloke Kar
Keyword(s):  
Distribution System ◽  
Small Businesses ◽  
Initial Period ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Income Group ◽  
Free Food ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Distribution System ◽  
Food Grains ◽  
On Line

The present study provides a snapshot of the level of degradation of economic and living conditions of middle-class households of Kolkata and its neighbourhood during ‘lockdown’. It is based on an on-line survey of households of students of five purposively-selected colleges carried out during the second half of May 2020. The survey reveals that inflow of regular normal income had ceased altogether for over 40% of the sample households. About 15% of the households suffered from outright job loss or complete denial or withholding of wages and salaries payments of their members in paid employment and another about 27% reported complete closure of small businesses run by them. The normal-times income had altogether ceased for over a half of the households of the lowest income group. Predictably, the worst hit group was the wage labourers. Over four-fifths households with their prime earning member in wage employment reported job and earnings related problems, with over a fourth reporting job losses. Households with self-employed prime earners too were severely affected, with about three-fourths of them reporting such problems. Even the households with regular-salaried prime earners were badly hit. About a half of them reported job and earnings related problems. The results suggest that food grains distribution through the Public Distribution System (PDS) played a decisive role in averting an imminent famine-like situation. About 60% of the sample households were found to have procured food stuff from the PDS. Among the wage-labourers’ households, well over 80% reported dependence on the PDS, with ostensibly a large proportion of them receiving food altogether free. Despite free food grains distribution, about 5% of the sample households could not arrange three meals a day for all its members.

scholarly journals A Review on E-Ration Card System

2020 ◽  
pp. 51-53
Author(s):  
Snehal S. Golait ◽  
Lutika Kolhe ◽  
Snehal Rahangdale ◽  
Anjali Godghate ◽  
Prajakta Sonkusare ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Distributed System ◽  
Smart Card ◽  
Distribution System ◽  
Manual Work ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Distribution System ◽  
The World ◽  
Card System ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Web

The Public Distribution System in India is the largest retail system in the world. Major problem in this system are the inefficiency in the targeting of beneficiaries, improve weighing machines used an illegal selling of goods. Automated public ration distributed system aim to replace the manual work in Public Distribution System there by reducing the corruption an illegal selling of stock. This paper gives the review on the E- Ration card system to distribute the grains automatically. The proposed system is used the conventional ration card which is replaced by smart card by using RIFD card. The RFID card redirect to the web of the shop , the required item are selected and payment is done and then item are collected from the machine. In this system, the government has control overall transaction that occurs in the ration shop and all the stock records are updated to the government databases so as to refill the stock with material thereby reducing the corruption.

Rethinking the Formation of Public Distribution System: A Class-Focused Approach

2021 ◽  
pp. 048661342110349
Author(s):  
Soumik Sarkar ◽  
Anjan Chakrabarti
Keyword(s):  
Food Security ◽  
Distribution System ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Surplus Labor ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Distribution System ◽  
System A ◽  
Historical Condition ◽  
Indian State ◽  
The 1960S

Using the methodology of overdetermination, class process of surplus labor as the entry point and socially determined need of food security, we deliver an alternative class-focused rendition of the public distribution system (PDS) in India. We first surmise our theoretical framework to infer that the overdetermined and contradictory relation of class and social needs matter for PDS. Beyond the reasoning of being pro-poor, fair, or wasteful, we deploy this framework to reinterpret the formation of Indian PDS in the 1960s. Its demonstration requires revisiting the historical condition that shaped capital’s passive revolution through the post-independence Indian state and its subsequent crisis arising out of the contradictions and conflicts in the class-need space. We argue that PDS signals a case of success and not failure of capitalism.

Food away from home and obesity in Brazil

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Pauletto Spanhol Finocchio ◽  
Homero Dewes
Keyword(s):  
Fruits And Vegetables ◽  
Public Health Problem ◽  
Overweight And Obesity ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Food Away From Home ◽  
Balanced Diet ◽  
Expenditure Data ◽  
Food Expenditure ◽  
The Individual

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to characterize food consumption outside the home and verify the existence of relationships between income, expenditure and the prevalence of overweight and obesity in adult individuals in Brazil. Design/methodology/approach – Food expenditure data were used as well as those on the prevalence of overweight and obesity available in the reports from Family Budgets Research carried out by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) in the years 2002-2003 and 2008-2009. In addition, the authors used the Kruskall-Wallis test to verify whether there were significant differences between the classes of income with respect to the average expenditure on food outside the home. Findings – It was observed that the higher the income of the individual, the greater the expenditure on food outside the home. It was also found that the prevalence of overweight and obesity is higher in individuals who have higher income, particularly among men. Thus, it is suggested that the higher the income of the individual, the larger the expenditure on food outside the home and the greater the prevalence of overweight and obesity. Research limitations/implications – This study used spending on food away from home (FAFH), but the authors know that is need to use other variables like frequency of FAFH and quantities but this data were not available. Practical implications – The study points to the importance of restaurants in the prevention of obesity, since they can offer in their menus foods with fewer calories, and they can also increase the variety and availability of fruits and vegetables. Originality/value – The study discusses the public health problem, obesity, at the same time as it presents the importance of agribusiness in providing a balanced diet for individuals.

Contradictory Policies of Neoliberalizing India

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-97
Author(s):  
Waquar Ahmed ◽  
Ipsita Chatterjee
Keyword(s):  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Distribution System ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Distribution System ◽  
Indian State ◽  
Global North ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
The One ◽  
Employment Guarantee

This paper examines the tensions and contradictions within the Indian state in its production of socio-economic policies. Pressure of global governance institutions, multinational corporations, and neoliberal states of the global North that back such corporations, have been instrumental in the production of -friendly economic policy in India. Additionally, in representing the interest of the national bourgeois, the Indian state has been receptive to ideas that favor marketization of the economy. However, public pressure, where the poor constitute the majority of the Indian population, has compelled the Indian state to also strengthen welfare. In examining this contradiction of the simultaneous production of neoliberal and welfare policy, we analyze the case of the public distribution system (which is being marketized) on the one hand, and the employment guarantee scheme (that demonstrates strengthening of welfare) on the other.

Rescaling the public distribution system in India: Mapping the uneven transition from spatialization to territorialization

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frédéric Landy
Keyword(s):  
Distribution System ◽  
Policy Innovation ◽  
Policy Framework ◽  
Central State ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Distribution System ◽  
Food Grains ◽  
Poor Households ◽  
A Minor

The Indian public distribution system operates like a huge machine transferring food grains procured by the federal government from surplus regions at a guaranteed price towards deficit areas where grains are sold at subsidized prices to poor households. The role of India’s regional States has become more significant in recent years with ‘decentralized procurement’. However, the national state has not become a minor actor, sandwiched between the globalization of food flows and decentralization policies. A process of state spatial rescaling is indeed taking place, although limited in scope and uneven across space. Before the 1990s, despite the uncontested power of the central state, sizeable differentiation already existed between States or ‘food zones’, in procurement as well as distribution. Recent rescaling of the policy has given States greater scope for policy innovation, via a ‘territorialization’ process. Nevertheless, despite significant rescaling to the subnational scale and the importance of ‘localization’ and ‘globalization’ trends, the national scale maintains a prominent position in the overall policy framework.

A Comparison of Food Choices Among Urban South African and New York Adolescents

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-32
Author(s):  
Eleanor T. Campbell ◽  
Ethelwynn Stellenberg ◽  
Natasha Nurse-Clarke
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
South African ◽  
Fruits And Vegetables ◽  
Food Choices ◽  
Unhealthy Food ◽  
Convenience Sample ◽  
The Public ◽  
Feeding Programs ◽  
School Feeding ◽  
Urban South

Child obesity prevention is a relatively new phenomenon in developing countries where food insecurity and malnutrition have been the public health focus. Yet obesity is a global health problem. The purpose of this study was to compare healthy and unhealthy food choices among a convenience sample of 114 adolescent youths from ethically and economically diverse communities in Cape Town, South Africa and New York City using surveys and focus groups. Findings showed no significant differences in healthy food choices among participants regardless of socioeconomic status (SES). For unhealthy food choices, there were significant differences between adolescents from low and middle SES levels. Interviews indicated that unhealthy choices were influenced by money, convenience, and parents. School feeding programs were influential in initiating and sustaining healthy choices, whereas barriers included money and convenience of access to unhealthy food options. Parents and schools provided the most influence on these adolescents’ healthy options by including fruits and vegetables in homemade and school program lunches.

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