Poverty and Food Security in Rural Odisha: The Gender Dimension

Abstract

This chapter contextualizes the gender dimensions of poverty and food insecurity as an important vantage point to understand the social embeddedness of neo-liberal economic transformation in Odisha. The broad economic terms, the poverty regime in Odisha is characterized by low-productive, mostly rainfed, subsistence paddy cultivation, rising landlessness and dependence on insecure, intermittently available low-paid wage work and high dependence on the informal credit market. The agrarian economy of Orissa and the way it has been transformed since the colonial period provides clues to the regionally and socially differentiated poverty regime in rural Orissa. Thus, the production and consumption of rice need to be examined more closely to understand the food security scenario in Odisha. Under conditions of environmental degradation, the work burden of women increases, and it adversely affects the food security of women and children. The Indian social reality is that a woman is best perceived in the confines of domesticity.