The COVID-19 pandemic and food insecurity: a viewpoint on India

Abstract

In this article, we present our viewpoint on COVID-19 pandemic and one of the humanitarian challenges it will likely pose: food insecurity. We begin our article by presenting the status of hunger and food insecurity around the world, followed by that in lower and middle income countries, and in India. Then we discuss the COVID-19 lockdown and India’s current economic status, followed by India’s ranking in the 2019 Global Hunger Index (GHI) as well as hunger-related facts on Indian women and children. Then after, we discuss the damages to lives caused by COVID-19 and hunger with implications for food insecurity, nutritional status, productivity, education, and wage earnings (based on literature). More importantly, we discuss various complimentary steps to preventing COVID-19 related deaths with steps to preventing deaths related to food insecurity and hunger for the immediate, medium, and long terms. Finally, we provide a concluding paragraph highlighting the need for the Indian government to carefully combine governmental and non-governmental interventions, in reducing India’s food insecurity and hunger rates despite the COVID-19 related slowdown.