Ξ Expert Interview Series: Professor Dipa Sinha
In this video, Dr Charumita Vasudev, qualitative postdoc on the project, interviews Prof Dipa Sinha on her work on food security and child malnutrition in India. Prof Dipa Sinha is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Ambedkar University, New Delhi. She has worked alongside the Office of Commissioners to the Indian Supreme Court, specifically focusing on the Right to Food, and remains actively engaged with the Right to Food Campaign in India. Her research focuses on public policy, gender, health, and nutrition.
In this interview, Prof Sinha talks about child malnutrition in India and the pressing need for ensuring dietary diversity. She emphasises the need to account for gender dynamics to understand the nutritional outcomes and food security at the household level. She further explains the importance of various welfare schemes that contribute towards ensuring food security and discusses how social and civil society movements are important for ensuring a just and equitable distribution of food.
Broadening the discussion to consider food security within a food systems framework, she questions who benefits from our economic growth model and who is left vulnerable. Drawing on her dual roles as a researcher and a food rights activist, she examines the concept of action research and identifies gaps in food security research that require attention.
Ξ Expert Interview Series: Professor Ramakumar
In this 7th episode of the Expert Interview Series, Dr Swayamshree Mishra is in conversation with Professor R. Ramakumar, a Professor in the School of Development Studies at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai since 2013. He also serves as a Non-ministerial Member of State Planning Board, Government of Kerala. His research interests are agrarian studies, agricultural economics, and rural development. In the State Planning Board, he oversees agriculture and allied services, land reforms, cooperation, irrigation and flood control, tourism, sports and youth service and skill development.
In this interview, Professor Ramakumar talks about how he looks at food insecurity through interdisciplinary lens. He discusses his work on sufficiency of production in India, distribution of food, and how its linked with entitlements and the Public Distribution System (PDS).
He highlights that when it comes to food insecurity, there is a substantial overlap between those who are income poor and those who belong to economically disadvantaged castes like Dalits and OBCs. He argues for universalism in food policies and distribution systems to avoid anyone falling through coverage gaps.
Professor Ramakumar advocates for a more intensive application of science and technology in agriculture to ensure that farmers can effectively address new issues that come up in cultivation in order to maintain production. Speaking about how broader global issues have impacted food security in India, he notes that the Ukraine war has a huge impact on the supply chain; the cost of food as well as the fertilizers have gone up, which has caused a major food shock and fertilizer shock for farmers in India.
Ξ Expert Interview Series: Mr Haldhar Mahto
In this episode of our expert interview series, our postdoctoral fellow Dr. Ankita Rathi speaks with Mr. Haldar Mahto, an Indian public policy expert. Mr. Mahto is currently working with the Grievance Redressal System in Ranchi, Jharkhand, India. Prior to this, he worked as the member of the State Food Commission, Government of Jharkhand, and was actively associated with important campaigns such as the Right to Food Campaign and Jan Swastha Abhiyan (People’s Health Movement) in India. Mr. Mahto has actively engaged on issues specific to food insecurity, public health, and governance in India, particularly in Jharkhand (an east Indian state).
Mr. Mahto offers an on-the-ground understanding of key food insecurity and nutritional challenges amongst tribal communities in India. Landlessness, denial of rights and lack of entitlement, a shift to market-based agriculture, climate change induced disasters, and lack of decentralized governance are some of the primary factors he identifies as linked to food insecurity. He also explains the importance of existing social policies such as the Public Distribution System (PDS, a key government programme that provides food grains to people at affordable prices) and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA, a program that aims to provide livelihood to people in rural areas by guaranteeing 100 days of work in a year). As Mr. Mahto notes, these programs actively combat hunger among marginalized tribal and agrarian communities. Major challenges of the existing social policies in India he highlights include: Difficulties of service delivery to remote areas; excessive reliance on local private intermediaries in the PDS; inability of the local private intermediaries and Angadwadi workers (community health care workers who provide supplementary nutritional and educational care services as part of government health care programs) to provide services to the poor equitably; and eligibility problems associated with inclusion vs. exclusion of some families. The key to addressing regional food insecurity in India, Mr. Mahto explains, includes decentralized local governance and a shift to multi-crop farming.
Ξ Expert Interview Series: Mr V R Raman
In the 5th episode of our “Expert Interview Series”, Dr Jasmine Fledderjohann, Principal Investigator on the Food Security for Equitable Futures project, speaks to Mr V R Raman, an expert on various social development systems and policies, especially in relation to the Indian subcontinent. He completed his post-graduate studies in Public Health at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa and his graduate studies in English language and literature at the University of Calicut, Kerala, India. Over the last three decades, Mr. Raman has worked closely with most of the state-led flagship social development missions in India, such as the National Literacy Mission, National Health Mission, Swachh Bharat (Sanitation) Mission, Jal Jeevan (Drinking Water) Mission and Poshan Abhiyan (Nutrition Mission). In addition, he is a co-founder and leader of some of the noted and mass-scale community health and nutrition programs and a few important state-civil society partnership organisations. Through his work, Mr Raman has explored gender, physical and social vulnerabilities and how they can be alleviated to build a human rights and dignity-based equitable society. He is currently the National Convenor of the Public Health Resource Network in India and is associated with several organisations and people’s campaigns.
In this interview, Mr. Raman identifies the various interconnected dimensions of food insecurity in India. Dr. Jasmine Fledderjohann and Mr Raman discuss the following issues that have a direct bearing on food insecurity in India:
• The links between water and sanitation with food insecurity and malnourishment,
• The structural challenges farmers are facing,
• The inadequacy and problems of market-based solutions in addressing the structural challenges of hunger and food insecurity,
• The challenges of inflation and price hikes and their impact on the lives of the masses,
• How much state-led schemes are able to address food insecurity,
• The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on food security,
• The need to move away from a market-centric economic model to a people-centric economy and,
• The need to refine data collection and monitoring practices to generate research geared toward identifying and alleviating food insecurity.
Ξ ReproFest 2022: Food Security – A Pressing Matter of Reproductive Justice: Dr. Jasmine Fledderjohann
Dr Jasmine Fledderjohann presented this paper at ReproFest, a community engagement and reproductive rights event held in Preston, England, on 29th April 2022. The paper was produced by Dr Fledderjohann in collaboration with clinical lecturer Dr Sophie Patterson of Lancaster University and activist and reproductive health scholar Maureen Owino of York University, Toronto.
While Dr. Fledderjohann focused specifically on the UK in the talk, given the focus on local reproductive rights issues at ReproFest, the paper the talk was based on examines the links between food insecurity and Reproductive Justice globally. The team’s work builds on the Reproductive Justice framework developed by Black intersectional feminist activists in the United States. The framework is rooted in international human rights, and it asserts that all people everywhere have three core reproductive rights: 1) the right to not have a child; 2) the right to have a child, and 3) the right to parent children with dignity in safe and healthy environments.
In their paper, Dr. Fledderjohann and her colleagues outline a range of ways that food insecurity can threaten each of these rights, with multiply marginalised people being most heavily impacted. They highlight, for example, how food insecurity can push people to make difficult decisions between spending money on food versus on reproductive healthcare. This can impact both the right to have a child and the right not to have a child. As another example, they explain that food insecurity can lead to stigma, social exclusion, malnutrition, and other negative outcomes for both parents and children, infringing on the right to parent children with dignity in safe and healthy environments.
Ξ Expert Interview Series: Dr. Vuong Ngoc Thuy
In the fourth episode of our “Expert Interview Series”, Dr Jasmine Fledderjohann, the Principal Investigator on the Food Security for Equitable Futures Project, speaks to Dr Vuong Ngoc Thuy, an expert on issues of food insecurity in Vietnam. Dr Vuong is a researcher/lecturer at the Institute of Ho Chi Minh City Public Health. Her research focuses on food insecurity and nutrition and food-borne and water-borne diseases. She has experience working with vulnerable sub-populations, especially the ethnic minority groups, the elderly and children. Dr Vuong is making efforts to shape policies to improve food security and nutrition in Vietnam for vulnerable sub-populations by providing accurate and reliable scientific evidence for policymakers.
In this interview, Dr Vuong offers her thoughts on food security in Vietnam in the larger context of the socio-economic structures and challenges the country will face in the short and long term. Dr Vuong highlights the structural similarities that Vietnam shares with other Low- and Middle-income Countries (LMICs) and how they are connected to global food insecurity. She points out that the biggest challenge Vietnam faces on the food security front is that of agricultural production and how factors such as climate variability, lack of fresh water, overdependence on chemical fertilisers and the high price of agricultural inputs affect food production. Dr Vuong also highlights how the CoVID-19 pandemic disrupted the food system, thus affecting food security and diet diversity for the Vietnamese population. Dr Vuong Ngoc also brings the disproportionate impact the pandemic had on the food security of vulnerable groups such as disabled people, the elderly, daily wage labourers, children, and pregnant women to the centre of the conversation.
Dr Vuong also talks about the measures that can be taken to keep the crisis from worsening and improve the country’s food security. Dr Vuong highlights the potential “climate-smart agriculture” as a solution holds for Vietnam in addressing the problem of food insecurity as it can help produce affordable and healthy foods for the people and, at the same time, rehabilitate the environment. Dr Vuong stresses the point that improving the food distribution mechanisms to reduce inequity in the food system and food waste must be a central objective for any policy that aims to address food insecurity.
Ξ Expert Interview Series: Dr. Alula Pankhurst
Dr Alula Pankhurst is a social anthropologist, and the Country Director for Young Lives Ethiopia since 2009. His role involves coordinating Young Lives research in Ethiopia and leading on topics including urban relocation, child work, early marriage and violence against children. In addition, he has been involved in policy dialogue on child marriage, FGM, and early childhood and youth development. Dr Pankhurst is a founding member of the Child Research and Practice Forum, a Board member of the Ethiopia Heritage Trust, a former board member of the Ethiopian Society of Sociologists, Social Workers and Anthropologists, and the former Board Chair of the Forum for Social Studies. He also serves on the Independent Council of Economic Advisors to the Ethiopian government and the Society of Friends of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies of Addis Ababa University.
In this interview with Dr Jasmine Fledderjohann, the Principal Investigator on the Food Security for Equitable Futures Project, Dr Pankhurst offers an empirically grounded account of recent food insecurity trends in Ethiopia. Prof. Pankhurst highlights how the climate crisis has accelerated food insecurity. Dr Pankhurst offers an insightful description of the complexity of food insecurity in Ethiopia and how it is cumulatively worsened by factors such as conflict, drought, changes in land holding, and global developments, most recently including the ongoing war in Ukraine. Dr Pankhurst also discusses some recent findings from his research, such as the link between anxiety and mental distress with food insecurity among households. Dr Pankhurst’s future research entails studying the trends in and consequences of intergenerational malnutrition in Ethiopia and understanding regional variations of food insecurity and their links to larger structural issues such as drought, pests (such as locust infestations), land holding patterns and mental health.
Ξ Expert Interview Series: Dr. Eduardo Zegarra
In this video, the second in our Expert Interview Series, Dr Jasmine Fledderjohann, lead investigator on the Food Security for Equitable Futures, interviews Dr Eduardo Zegarra Méndez about his views on food insecurity in Peru. Dr Zegarra is an economist from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and has a PhD in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Wisconsin, specializing in rural development and natural resource management. Dr Zegarra has been working as a Senior Researcher at the Group for the Analysis of Development (GRADE) in Lima, Peru, since 2004.
In this interview, Dr Zegarra shares insights about his experience studying the trends in food insecurity in Peru and how gaps in state policy can be plugged to address food insecurity and improve agricultural practices and rural development. Dr Zegarra also shares insights gained from his work with state institutions and how policies can be designed and implemented to address food insecurity in the short term and the long term whilst negotiating recurring crises of the global system.
Ξ Expert Interview Series: Dr. Lam Van Phong
In this video, the first of our Expert Interview Series, Dr. Jasmine Fledderjohann, lead investigator on the Food Security for Equitable Futures, interviews Dr. Lam Van Phong about his views on food insecurity in Vietnam. Dr. Lam Van is a medical doctor in the Nutrition and Dietics Department at Nguyen Tri Phuong Hospital in Vietnam.
In this interview, Dr. Lam Van shares his insights about his experience working as a frontline healthcare worker during the Covid-19 pandemic, with focus on the implications of the pandemic for nutrition and food insecurity. He also shares his personal experiences with food insecurity during the pandemic, and reflects on next steps for addressing food insecurity in Vietnam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpXC8YPtyfg
Ξ Press Article in Big Issue North
Dr Jasmine Fledderjohann’s article, that she drafted along with Dr Amy Clair and Dr Bran Knowles, is published in the Big Issue North – Big Issue North is a charity based news-magazine that promotes socially conscious media content.
The article entitled ‘Why Don’t We Just… make policy that fulfils human rights?‘, highlights how the social problems observed during the pandemic in fact stem from long-standing structural inequalities linked to erosion of social protection policies over the past several decades.
Ξ Book Launch Event Recording
Launch of the new book ‘A Watershed Moment for Social Policy and Human Rights? Where next for the UK Post-COVID‘, by Drs Amy Clair, Jasmine Fledderjohann, and Bran Knowles.
About the book
The book considers inequalities both before and during the pandemic in 4 key domains: medical care, food, housing, and access to digital technology. Importantly, it highlights how the social problems observed during the pandemic in fact stem from long-standing structural inequalities linked to erosion of social protection policies over the past several decades. The book identifies the pitfalls in relying on charities and big tech to resolve these social problems, and explains why this is a pivotal moment for social policy–one which could, with active investment, result in a more equitable and just system going forward.
Ξ Video Abstract
Watch our experts talk about their work on the timing and persistence of food insecurity and children’s learning outcomes in India here:
