Food for thought from villages

A new NSSO survey shows people in rural areas spending 55% of their monthly earning on food, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Dec 28, 2006, 02:55:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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So you thought people living in urban areas spend more on food as compared to their rural counterparts? The answer is Yes and No.

Yes, because the average monthly expenditure in urban and rural areas is Rs 447 and Rs 331, respectively. And no because rural India spends a higher percentage of money per month on its food basket as compared to those living in the cities.

Why are people in urban areas spending less on food? To pay for the high cost of living in the cities, according to a new survey by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO).

In 2004-05, when the survey was done, the average expenditure of an urban household on food was just 42.5 per cent, five per cent less than that in 1999-2000. In 1972-73, this figure was as high as 64 per cent.

Between 1999 and 2005, spending on fuel and electricity went up from 7.8 per cent to about 10 per cent.

Also, expenditure on miscellaneous goods and city services jumped from 31 per cent to 37 per cent during the period. The cost of education, health facilities, rent and taxes in cities almost doubled during the period, the report said.

As compared to the cities, those in rural areas spend 55 per cent of their monthly income on food. Also, the cost of services in villages is less than in cities, the report stated.

Unlike rural India, where cereals are preferred, urban Indians spend more from their food budget on egg, fish and meat - Rs 124 per month on average - as compared to Rs 90 in rural areas.

When it comes to nutritious food, rural India is way ahead. Its per capita intake of rice, wheat, pulses, milk products and vegetables is higher than urban India.

For example, the per capita intake of rice per month in rural and urban areas is 6.55 kg and 4.85 kg, respectively.

Cities score over villages only in the case of fruit, nut and beverage consumption. As against 4.5 per cent share of these items in the food basket of villagers, that of cities is 7 per cent.

Both in rural and urban India, the per capita consumption of cereals came down over a decade. Quantity of cereals consumed per person in a month declined between 1993-94 and 2004-05 from 13.4 kg to 12.1 kg in rural India and from 10.6 kg to 9.9 kg in urban India.

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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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