Context:  The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report and lockdown distress have renewed focus on food security in India, which has the world’s largest food insecure population.

• State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report show that India retains the suspicious discrepancy of being the country with the largest population of food insecure people.
• The prevalence of food insecurity increased by 3.8 percentage points in India between 2014 and 2019, by 2019, 6.2 crore more people were living with food insecurity than the number in 2014 according to a report which was released by  several United Nations organisations.

Authoritative indicators of food insecurity
The SOFI report presents the most authoritative evaluation of hunger and food insecurity in the world every year.  Since 2017, SOFI presents two key measures of food insecurity:

• The conventional measure called the Prevalence of Undernourishment (PoU) and a new measure called the Prevalence of Moderate and Severe Food Insecurity (PMSFI).
• PoU is focused on estimating the proportion of population facing chronic deficiency of caloriesand the PMSFI is a more comprehensive measure of the lack of access to adequate and nutritious food. 
• The Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) and the PMFSI have been widely adopted by countries across the world because of the solid conceptual foundations of this methodology and the ease of collection of data.

Country data

• The report provides three-year average estimates of the number of food insecure people for South Asia as a whole and for South Asia (excluding India). By taking a difference between the two, one can derive the estimates for India.
• The number of food insecure people grew from 42.65 crore in 2014-16 to 48.86 crore in 2017-19. While the PMSFI increased in India by 3.7 percentage points during this period, it fell by 0.5 percentage points in the rest of South Asia.
• The per capita dietary energy supply in India increased by 3.8% between 2011-13 and 2015-17.
• The consumption survey data that became available through a media leak showed that the average consumption expenditure (covering food and other expenses) fell by 3.7% between 2011-12 and 2017-18.

Causes of suffering

• The significant rise in food insecurity suggests overall economic distress during this period marked by a deepening agricultural crisis, falling investments across sectors and shrinking employment opportunities.
• It is widely believed that demonetisation and introduction of the Goods and Services Tax were two prime causes of economic distressduring this period as unemployment rates in the recent years have been higher than in the last four decades.
• Sudden loss of livelihoods, a vast majority of India’s poor are faced with increased food insecurity, hunger and starvation because of the on-going crisis due to Covid-19.

About State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report

• The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World is a flagship report jointly prepared by FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO to inform on progress towards ending hunger, achieving food security and improving nutrition and to provide in-depth analysis on key challenges for achieving this goal in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
• It is published annually.

Road Ahead

• COVID-19 pandemic has brought renewed focus on the problems of hunger and food insecurity. 
• With a sudden loss of livelihoods, a vast majority of India’s poor are faced with increased food insecurity, hunger and starvation.
• It is critical for India to conduct a national survey on food insecurity to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food security of different sections of the population.