Measuring Household Food Security Index for High Hill Tribal Community of Nagaland, India

Abstract

With limited literature available on food security of tribal people, the study focused on the methodology of measurement on food security index of the tribal people residing in high altitude remote rural villages of Phek district of Nagaland, a state in north eastern part of India. Six indices on household food security developed and elaborated by international agencies were adopted with due modification to suit the study region. A multi-stage sample survey on rural households was conducted with pre tested structured interview schedule in Phek district during November 2016 for getting information on socio-economic aspects, food basket, weekly consumption of food groups, weekly expenditure on food items etc. From the information obtained four components of food security namely Household Diet Diversity Score, Food Consumption Score, Coping Strategy Index, Self Assessed Food Security Scale, and two components of household food insecurity namely Household Hunger Scale and Household Food Insecurity and Access Scale has been developed. Overall Food Security Index (FSIP) was obtained from the algebraic relation on above mentioned six indicators. The result showed that there was high and significant correlation of indicators like HDDSP (r= 0.36), HHSP (r= -0.57), CSIP (r= 0.58), HFIASP (r= -0.43) and SAFSP (r= 0.40) with FSIP. Socio-economic factors especially household income (r=0.226) and family size (r= -0.496) had significant correlation with FSIP. Large family sizes were significantly lower in food security index compared with small family size households. It is concluded from the study that alternative methodology of indicators are useful to study region specific food security rather conventional generalized ones.