Volume 6, Issue 3, July 2014, Pages 622–628
Debabrata Das1, Monika Saxena2, and Bibekananda Das3
1 Indus Business Academy, Plot No. 44, Knowledge Park-III, Greater Noida-201308, Uttar Pradesh, India
2 Indus Business Academy, Plot No. 44, Knowledge Park-III, Greater Noida-201308, Uttar Pradesh, India
3 Indus Business Academy, Plot No. 44, Knowledge Park-III, Greater Noida-201308, Uttar Pradesh, India
Original language: English
Copyright © 2014 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
India is home to 22 per cent of the world's poor, but the majority is in rural area. Such a high incidence of poverty is a matter of concern in view of the fact that food security and its quality has been one of the major concerns for rural poor. Agricultural wage earners, small and marginal farmers and casual workers engaged in non-agricultural activities, constitute the bulk of the rural poor. Small land holdings and their low productivity are the cause of poverty among households dependent on land-based activities for their livelihood. Even after six decades of independence and two decades of economic liberalization, it remains the bitter truth. This study assumes greater significance, because, majority of the rural poor still depend on low quality of food grain leading to poor health and malnutrition. An effective public distribution system with quality of food grain would help in reducing the government spending on public health problems. This study could be useful not only to India, but to many other economies that are on the threshold of transition; where majority of the population, still lives in the rural areas, and are predominantly dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. This study was undertaken with the objective of analyzing the socio-economic conditions of rural poor of India with respect to their quality of food grain consumption. The study conducts a questionnaire based survey on demographic, economic, and perceptible parameters on quality of food; using ordinal logit model to identify variables useful for the study. The respondents with larger income have more chances of consuming good quality of food. Interestingly, it is also found that most of the poorest of the poor respondents spend high share of their income on food consumption.
Author Keywords: Ordinal Regression Model, Food Quality, Rural Poor, Below Poverty Line, Bihar, Orissa, India.
Debabrata Das1, Monika Saxena2, and Bibekananda Das3
1 Indus Business Academy, Plot No. 44, Knowledge Park-III, Greater Noida-201308, Uttar Pradesh, India
2 Indus Business Academy, Plot No. 44, Knowledge Park-III, Greater Noida-201308, Uttar Pradesh, India
3 Indus Business Academy, Plot No. 44, Knowledge Park-III, Greater Noida-201308, Uttar Pradesh, India
Original language: English
Copyright © 2014 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
India is home to 22 per cent of the world's poor, but the majority is in rural area. Such a high incidence of poverty is a matter of concern in view of the fact that food security and its quality has been one of the major concerns for rural poor. Agricultural wage earners, small and marginal farmers and casual workers engaged in non-agricultural activities, constitute the bulk of the rural poor. Small land holdings and their low productivity are the cause of poverty among households dependent on land-based activities for their livelihood. Even after six decades of independence and two decades of economic liberalization, it remains the bitter truth. This study assumes greater significance, because, majority of the rural poor still depend on low quality of food grain leading to poor health and malnutrition. An effective public distribution system with quality of food grain would help in reducing the government spending on public health problems. This study could be useful not only to India, but to many other economies that are on the threshold of transition; where majority of the population, still lives in the rural areas, and are predominantly dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. This study was undertaken with the objective of analyzing the socio-economic conditions of rural poor of India with respect to their quality of food grain consumption. The study conducts a questionnaire based survey on demographic, economic, and perceptible parameters on quality of food; using ordinal logit model to identify variables useful for the study. The respondents with larger income have more chances of consuming good quality of food. Interestingly, it is also found that most of the poorest of the poor respondents spend high share of their income on food consumption.
Author Keywords: Ordinal Regression Model, Food Quality, Rural Poor, Below Poverty Line, Bihar, Orissa, India.
How to Cite this Article
Debabrata Das, Monika Saxena, and Bibekananda Das, “Food Quality of Rural Poor in India: A Case Study of Orissa and Bihar,” International Journal of Innovation and Applied Studies, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 622–628, July 2014.
