Household Food Security Under Changing Socio Economic Environment in Vidarbha Region

Household food security remains to be a major concern in India as thousands of adults and children suffering from malnourishment. The present study was conducted in two purposively selected districts i.e. Bhandara and Chandrapur in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra during 2011–12 to investigate the dynamics of socioeconomic and environmental factors on household food security. A stratified random sampling technique was followed to further choose the villages and respondents. A total of 8 villages were drawn randomly from four blocks i.e. two villages from each of two blocks of Bhandara (Sakoli and Pauni) and Chandrapur (Bhadravati and Warora) districts were selected. Twenty five respondents were selected randomly from each of the sampled eight villages. Thus, a total of 200 respondents from two districts constituted the sample for the study. Study highlighted the implications of changes taking place in socio-economic environment of household (both BPL and APL category) and factors affecting the household food security. The study revealed that increasing liquor consumption and smoking habits with 0.97 mean score (MS) and 0.95 (MS), respectively followed by declining social support system (0.95 MS and 0.91 MS) were the top ranking changes among the Below Poverty Level (BPL) and Above Poverty Level (APL) households. The study also revealed that the top three socio-economic factors which affected the household food security were increased consumption of tobacco (1.50 MS & 1.51 MS), increased consumption of liquor (1.67 MS & 1.66 MS) and incurring more expenditure on social customs and rituals (2.39 MS & 2.08 MS) among BPL and APL households, respectively.