Poverty-Hunger Divergence in India

The usual explanations for the divergence between calorie intake and consumption expenditure in India ignore the enormous squeeze on food budgets arising from dispossession (leading to loss of access to common property resources), rising migration (involving a loss of access to non-market food items) and the forced turn to the private sector for social sector services that are more expensive than public sector provision. It is the resulting squeeze on food budgets that has led to calorie intake declining even as per capita consumption expenditure has risen.