Affordability of Nutritious Diets in Rural India

Affordability of Nutritious Diets in Rural India was published by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington, D.C., in March 2020. IFPRI works to provide research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition. The paper’s authors are the IFPRI researchers Kalyani Raghunathan and Derek Headey, as well as the US-based independent scholar Anna Herforth.The paper discusses the affordability of nutritious diets in rural India, keeping in mind the country’s high malnutrition levels. It studies rural price and wage data to identify the cheapest means for the Indian population to satisfy dietary recommendations, or the ‘Cost of a Recommended Diet’ (CoRD). By analysing problems in the agricultural sector, the paper assesses the affordability of the CoRD relative to the wages of unskilled labourers. It explores the reasons behind nutritious diets being inaccessible, especially for women.The publication draws information on food prices and wages from datasets of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation’s National Sample Survey Organisation (now, the National Statistical Office). The information pertains to 24 states, 380 districts and 101 food items, from October 2001 to June 2011. This period marked rapid economic growth in India, along with food inflation and significant policy developments in the rural economy such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) of 2005...