Milk, fruits cost more but India’s platter gets healthier

The latest National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data shows that spending of an Indian has more than doubled on buying fruit, vegetables and milk products in the last five years whereas expenditure on cereals and pulses has increased by only between 33 to 75%. Chetan Chauhan reports. Food for thought

Updated on: Jul 6, 2013, 01:41:24 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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An average Indian is spending much more on buying fruits and vegetables and milk products than cereals and pulses. Call it the inflation impact.

The latest National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data shows that spending of an Indian has more than doubled on buying fruit, vegetables and milk products in the last five years whereas expenditure on cereals and pulses has increased by only between 33 to 75%.

Spending on fruit, vegetables and milk products has increased much more than average increase in overall expenditure on food items indicating inflationary impact.

The survey of around one lakh households across India on consumer expenditure released in June shows that per capita monthly food expenditure of an Indian has increased by around 110 % between 2007-08 and 2011-12. But that on vegetable, fruits and milk products increased between 120 to 240 %.

This is primarily because the prices of fruit, vegetables and milk products have more than doubled during the period, thereby showing implication for one’s monthly spending. “It also shows that people are getting health conscious and spending more on what they consider healthy food,” said a senior government official.

Although the survey confirms that popular perception that an average Indian has more disposable income, the worrying trend is that share of milk has increase in one’s monthly food budget. Spending on most of other food items as share of monthly expenditure has been on decline.

In fact, the share of milk in one’s food budget was on decline till 2004-05. It started shooting up thereafter and witnessed maximum increase between 2009-10 and 2011-12.

Further segregation of data shows that spending of rural Indians on fruit, vegetables and milk products has increased more than those in urban areas.

For instance, the spending of a person in rural India on milk products increased by 105% in rural India as compared to 90% in urban areas. Similarly, spending on fruits and vegetables in rural India was higher than in urban areas.

The trend is broken when it comes to spending on cereals and pulses. The expenditure of an urban Indian on cereals increased by 47% as against 33% for the same in villages. And the probable reason was that in villages people grow cereals and pulses for home consumption which is not accounted in the survey.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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