Empowering Rural Women to Fight Hunger

Dhirendra Newar

(The author can be contacted at email: dhiren.newar@gmail.com.)

The Global Hunger Index 2019 is out and India has once again fallen from its previous rank to 102 among 117 nations, being tagged as a country with ‘serious’ levels of hunger. India ranked 55 out of 76 nations in 2014 and 100 out of 119 in 2017. It ranked well below neighbors including China, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Not only that, many African nations including Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Rwanda fared better than India. This is a major concern for India with many children dying due to hunger and poverty.

A UNICEF report titled ‘The State of the World Children 2019’revealed that malnutrition caused 69 per cent of total deaths of children below the age of five in India. This includes several micro nutrient deficiencies including stunting, wasting, overweight etc. The similar finding was revealed in a report on malnutrition presented by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) and National Institute of Nutrition (NIN). According to the report, the DALY (Disability Adjusted Life Years) rate due to malnutrition was found to be highest in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Assam and Rajasthan. This was also highest among children.

All these reports suggest that India is running through a bad phase of development with respect to providing sufficient nutrition and better life care to its citizens. An important question arises here — what is the possible solution? The practical answer would be to empower women, especially women of rural India. This is simply because rural India is battling acute poverty levels, much more than urban India. In rural areas, women form a major part of agricultural workforce. A United Nation report suggests that in developing countries, women make upto 45 per cent of the agricultural labour force, ranging from 20 per cent in Latin America to upto 60 per cent in certain parts of Africa and Asia. This is also similar in case of India. With varied roles being played by rural Indian women as farmer, farm worker, caregiver etc, they form an inseparable part of rural societies. So their role in eliminating hunger and poverty can’t be denied at all.

Many would agree that women give greater importance to health and nutrition, education as well as other household activities in the family. Therefore giving a greater say in economic and financial activities to women can drastically change the picture here. This will not only help in utilizing more money towards health and nutrition levels of children but also in drastically raising savings, as this would mean lesser spending on alcohol consumption, gambling etc by male members. This finds more relevance in states like Assam with a majority of tea garden workers spending a hefty amount of their wages in alcohol consumption and other related activities. Therefore the rate of malnutrition In Assam is also reported highest from tea garden areas.

However the gloomy picture here is that inspite of the proven contribution by women in agricultural and related sectors, there are a lot of discrepancies in land ownership between men and women in our country with many reports suggesting that women own only 10-20 per cent of agricultural plots. Also there are lots of discrimination against rural women in providing credit to them for agricultural purposes. Moreover, owing to several household activities, women can’t acquire proper knowledge and information about agricultural practices, which contributes negatively in agricultural production as well as harvesting. UN Secretary General Antonio Gueterres in his message on International day of Rural Women said: “A quarter of the total damage and loss resulting from climate related disaster between 2006 and 2016 was suffered by the agricultural sector in developing countries, and women suffer disproportionately in such disasters”. Therefore, rural women have a major role to play in agriculture related works which ultimately is the only tool to provide adequate food supply to raise the nutrition level of children. A report from United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) says that while female farmers’ roles may vary across regions, they consistently have less access to resources and opportunities than their male counterparts. Closing this gender gap could lift as many as 150 million people out of hunger, amounting to 12-17 per cent globally.

Government of India has already launched several schemes to improve the hunger scene. POSHAN Abhiyan is one of them which is ‘India’s flagship programme to improve nutritional outcomes for children, adolescents, pregnant women and lactating mother by leveraging technology, a targeted approach and convergence’. It was primarily launched in 2017-18 to reduce instances of malnutrition and stunting in children by 2022. However several studies claim that though the target is ‘aspirational’ yet many Indian states are running far behind and may not be able to achieve those targets. This would have been a better strategy as this scheme focuses not only on children’s health but also on the health and nutrition of pregnant women as well as lactating mothers. Therefore government should focus more on eliminating all the barriers in its proper implementation. This apart, the government should look towards implementation of various other nutrition related schemes including Mead Day Meal, Integrated Child Development Scheme etc to nourish each and every child.

Education of rural women here plays a very crucial role, for it is the first step towards their empowerment. There is also a direct link between the education of a mother and the nutrition of her child. The recently released pan India survey of Health and Family Welfare Ministry corroborates the same. The Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (CNNS) studied 1.2 lakh children between 2016 and 2018 and found that higher the level of schooling of mother, higher is the focus on nutrition and diet of children. The data shows that only 11.4 per cent children of mothers with no schooling received adequate diverse meals, while 31.8 per cent children whose mothers finished class XII received diverse meals. The data also revealed that around 45 per cent of children up to 4 years old whose mothers did not go to school suffer from anaemia, whereas the rate is below 35 per cent of the same group of children whose mothers completed class XII of schooling.

The energy sector has a bigger role to play here. It has a direct connection with empowerment of rural women as well as in socio-economic development of society. With adequate energy supply, the rural girl child can focus more on her studies as well as educational development. Due to ICT enabled classrooms, the girl child finds it interesting to continue her schooling. The internet has also helped rural mothers to better access information related to nutrition as well as child health care. With adequate supply of electricity to the health sector, it has drastically improved the health condition of rural women. Due to better access to electricity in rural areas, apart from day long household works, many rural women engaged in weaving, handloom, handicrafts etc can work at night and earn extra money for the family, which will definitely raise the standard of the family diet and nutrition.

It is to be noted that women form the largest workforce of household affairs and family welfare. With several reports suggesting direct linkage between women empowerment with improved nutrition, as well as higher levels of education of women with that of nutritious diets of their children, the government should focus more on empowering them. In the empowerment of rural women lies the possibility of releasing our nation from hunger and poverty.