Is there a role for caste and religion in food security policy? A look at rural India

Renuka Mahadevan and Sandy Suardi

Economic Modelling, 2013, vol. 31, issue C, 58-69

Abstract: This paper finds that factors such as caste and religion influence food security at the regional level. Thus defining affirmative action within food security programs may be necessary as the current practice of designing food security programs around the poverty line is shown to deliver limited results. In this regard, another lack of consideration is region-specific analysis within the rural areas which shows varied influence, thereby cautioning against a ‘one size fits all’ general policy of the central government. Evidence also shows that socio-economic factors and social assistance programs had different impacts on calorie gap depending on one's nutritional status. This nonlinear relationship has been neglected in most studies on food security and thus raises doubt on past assessment and policy implications.

Keywords: Food security; Rural India; Caste; Religion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C31 I31 J15 R2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026499931200418X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:31:y:2013:i:c:p:58-69

DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2012.11.060

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Modelling is currently edited by S. Hall and P. Pauly

More articles in Economic Modelling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().