1st Edition
Food and Nutrition Systems in Urban India Towards Disentitlement
This book explores identity-mediated dynamics of food and nutrition entitlement in urban India analysing concerns around equity, access to food and public health.
The issues of disentitlement and identity dynamics when it comes to nutrition and health are more intricate in the urban context, due to a greater population and cultural diversity. While in the global north, urban food planning is increasingly dependent on local government, in developing countries urban nutrition is yet to be considered a serious policy issue. This book, with a disaggregated analysis for urban India and an in-depth case study of Mumbai, examines how malnutrition in India is becoming an urban challenge. It discusses how far caste, religion and migratory identities serve as a source of deprivation and analyses the role of local governance, particularly municipal governance and urban planning, in facilitating the disentitlement. It also offers suggestions for the global south to reverse the stark inequality in its urban centres and address nutrition challenges by developing their own sustainable and resilient food systems.
This book is an essential read for scholars and researchers of public health, nutrition, urban sociology, urban planning, development studies, political sociology, public policy and political studies.
List of figures. List of tables. 1. Introduction 2. The food and nutrition discourse- underlining the urban agenda 3. Is malnutrition an urban challenge in India? 4. Identity as a source of deprivation: group inequality in child malnutrition in urban India 5. Migrants in Mumbai: how secure nutritionally? 6. Isolated pockets in Mumbai: disentitled and de-nourished 7. Urban South: conceptualizing a food system of its own. Index.
Biography
Neetu Choudhary is Associate Professor of Economics with the Amity University Patna, India and Adjunct Faculty with the Arizona State University, USA. She has been a Fulbright Fellow with the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, ASU. She is a doctorate in Economics from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. She has published considerably in the area of nutrition and water insecurity, gender, and informal workers’ organizing. She was also awarded the Global Development Network Award for best research on development in 2014. Among her non-academic assignments, she has been engaged in research collaboration with several UN organizations.
