Hunger and Coping Strategies among Kondh Tribe in Kalahandi District, Odisha (Eastern India)

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