Project's title: Food Security And Health Status Among Tribal and Non-Tribal Populations of Amaravati District, Maharashtra

Introduction: The right to food and freedom from hunger reemerged during the 1990s. The historical World Food Summit was held in Rome in 1996 in which 185 countries participated and signed the Rome Declaration on World Food Security. The Rome Declaration reaffirmed the right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritious food. As a consequence, the right to adequate food is recognized as fundamental right. The world communities further pledged to cut the number of the world's hungry people to half by 2015 (World Food Summit 1996).

Food security is the important means to realize the right to food. It means the access to the adequate food to all members of the household throughout the year. The Nobel Laureate, Amartya Sen has provided a framework of food entitlement in order to understand the access to food and genesis of hunger. According to him, own production, stored wealth, employment, kinship and government transfers are all possible sources of food entitlement (Sen 1981). Economists have given serious attention to the study of food security at the national and regional levels (Dreze and Sen 1991), but the studies on food security at the household level are scarce. The study makes an attempt to examine the food security among the most vulnerable section of the Indian society i.e. the scheduled tribes.

Objectives:

• To assess the availability of food through the access to land, forest and livestock resources at the household level.
• To examine the access to food grain through public distribution system (PDS).
• To assess the level of local employment- both on and off-farm employment and their food entitlements.
• To study the level and pattern of migration, if any, caused by food scarcity and their implications for food security.
• To study the perception about the food adequacy by gender.
• To know the level of awareness about the different government programmes like Employment Guarantee Scheme, Mid Day Meal Scheme, Antyodaya Ann Yojana, and Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS).

Methodology: The study will be conducted in six villages of Amaravati district. The villages of the district will be stratified into plain and hilly areas. It is proposed to select one tribal and one non-tribal village from the plain and three tribal and one non-tribal villages from the hilly areas. From each village, a sample of 100 households will be drawn systematically i.e. a total of 600 households from the rural areas representing 400 and 200 households belonging to tribal and non-tribal population respectively. In order to obtain that target sample households, those villages having household number of at least 150 households will be considered at the time of selection of the villages.

Data will be collected through interview schedule canvassed to the heads of the households regarding household production of food and procurement from the market and the PDS shops. However, in order to know the consumption intake, women will be interviewed. Along with head of the household, the wife of the head will also be interviewed. Regarding the adequacy of food a question similar to NSS 55th round such as “Is the household getting enough food everyday throughout the year, only some months of the year or not even some months?” will be asked to each of the household (NSSO, 2001). Interviews will also be conducted with the panchayat leaders/local leaders, ICDS workers and PDS distributors to get the qualitative information. This information will be used to support the quantitative findings of the study.