Demanding accountability for hunger in India

Joshi, Anuradha and Patnaik, Biraj and Sinha, Dipa (2017) Demanding accountability for hunger in India. [Publications (Pre-joining)]

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Abstract

The new politics emerging out of the food, fuel and financial crises that started in 2008 was born out of a sense of discontent with the ruling classes. The roots of the protests in country after country, and the responses they evoked can be best viewed, as this book argues, through the lens of a ‘politics of provisions,’–the way in which “common people interacted with their rulers over subsistence,” and how these interactions were “permitted and shaped by pre-existing social and political networks, both among rioters and between them and their rulers”(Bohstedt 2016: 1036). Riots (or not) and responses (or repression) at moments of crises throw the ongoing politics of provisions into special focus by highlighting the boundaries of what the rulers will accept as a form of protest by the ruled, and what the ruled deem as necessary action. In each of the country cases in this volume we have seen how this politics of provisions played out with particular nuances. The price spikes of 2008 and 2011 were the source of social unrest, with commodity-dependent democracies such as Cameroon, Mozambique and Kenya being particularly vulnerable to protests. India is far less dependent on food imports, and although it did experience rising inflation, it did not witness sudden inflationary spikes during this period (Chandrasekhar and Ghosh 2013). Protests around food were few and highly localized, mainly because India has had a large program of subsidized food for the poorest households through the Public Distribution System (PDS) since the 1950s. The only reported ‘food riots’ were in fact around perceived corruption in the PDS in West Bengal. Instead, between 2001–2014, India saw a rise in mobilization around a ‘right to food’which was aimed at ensuring food security for all, especially the most marginalized, through guaranteed entitlements of basic food grains at subsidized prices. Significantly, such mobilization varied spatially across states. While a few states saw riots, in most states strong grassroots movements emerged and played a key role in the national right to food campaign. In this chapter we explore the politics of provisions in the case of India.

Item Type:	Publications (Pre-joining)
Authors:	Joshi, Anuradha and Patnaik, Biraj and Sinha, Dipa
Document Language:	Language English
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Hunger, poverty
Subjects:	Social sciences Social sciences > Economics Social sciences > Social problems & services Social sciences > Social problems & services > Public health
Divisions:	Azim Premji University - Bengaluru > University Publications > Centre for the Study of the Indian Economy (CSIE)
Full Text Status:	Public
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	http://publications.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/id/eprint/6665
Publisher URL:	https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315175249-6

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