Abstract:
In many parts of the world, hunger is pervasive and chronic; persisting even when weather is good and global
agricultural production is adequate. Those who are undernourished in normal times are overwhelmingly the
poor in the developing market economies of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Near East. For these people
hunger is fundamentally a reflection of poverty embedded in unequal distributions of wealth, income and
power within their societies and among nations.
1
Hunger is an important aspect indicating food insecurity.
Hunger is not just an expression of poverty, it brings about poverty. The attainment of food security therefore
involves eliminating current hunger and reducing the risks of future hunger. Hunger has chronic and seasonal
dimensions. Chronic hunger is a consequence of diets persistently inadequate in terms of quantity and/or
quality. Poor people suffer from chronic hunger because of their very low income and in turn inability to buy
food even for survival. Seasonal hunger is related to cycles of food growing and harvesting. This is prevalent
in rural areas because of the seasonal nature of agricultural activities and in urban areas because of the
casual labour, e.g., there is less work for casual construction labour during the rainy season. This type of
hunger exists when a person is unable to get work for the entire year. According to Amartya Sen and Jean
Dreze, “Hunger is intolerable in the modern world” in a way it could not have been in the past, because it
is “so unnecessary and unwarranted.” (The Hindu, October 24: 2006). India is a poignant example of how
food sufficiency at the aggregate level has not translated into food security at the household level
