Two decades on, hunger still haunts Gujarat: Survey exposes Niti Aayog's poverty claims

 

By Rajiv Shah 

A Niti Aayog report, released about two years ago, estimated that in Gujarat — which our powers-that-be have long considered a model state — 11.66% of people are "multidimensionally poor," a term referring to an index that seeks to estimate "multiple and simultaneous deprivations" at the household level across three macro categories: health, education, and living standards.

The report suggests that multidimensional poverty in Gujarat declined by around 7% over a period of five years, pointing out that in tribal-dominated districts, where poverty levels were particularly high, there has been a clear improvement: in Dahod from 54.93% to 38.27%, in Dangs from 57.33% to 26.61%, in Narmada from 37.11% to 22.62%, and in Panchmahal from 41.52% to 18.11%.

Basing its estimates on the National Family Health Surveys of 2015–16 and 2019–21, the report claims the "most rapid reduction" in multidimensional poverty occurred in districts located in four states: Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan.

While not directly disputing what the Government of India report highlights regarding Gujarat, a new survey carried out by a civil rights group in two tribal districts — Dahod and Panchmahal — and two non-tribal districts — Bhavnagar and Morbi — suggests that things aren't as rosy as they are made out to be.

A follow-up to a similar survey carried out in 2004, the new survey — conducted in 2025 by Anandi (Area Networking and Development Initiatives or ASAA) — reveals that, even after two decades, total food security continues to elude nearly 80% of the population in the surveyed areas. To quote Sejal A. Dand, a senior activist directly involved in both the 2004 and 2025 surveys, two decades ago, 10% of people were found to be "food secure," and this percentage has gone up by just 2% over the years — to 12%.

Releasing details of the 2025 survey, which was conducted with the help of senior academic Prof. Dipa Sinha, currently with Azim Premji University, another Anandi activist, Neeta Hardikar, told the Ahmedabad media that there is certainly a change: unlike in 2004, there is “no full day hunger” as found then, “but our survey suggests that a large number of households often don't have access to food, especially in the tribal areas.”

The survey results confirm this: The 2025 survey shows that among Panchmahal's tribals 7.06% "live in hunger," while a whopping 86.38% have "incomplete meal," and only 6.56% have a "full meal." Conditions are worse in the trubal Dahod district: here, 24.61% live in hunger, 58.78% have "incomplete meal," and only 16.61% have a "full meal."

The 2025 results indicate that the situation is not much better in the non-tribal areas of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat where the survey was also conducted. In Malia (Morbi district), 9.10% "lived in hunger," 75.51% had "incomplete meal," while only 15.38% had a "full meal." Similarly, in Shihor and Umrala of Bhavnagar district, 15.98% "lived in hunger", 54.84% had "incomplete meal," and just 14.13% had a "full meal."

The 2025 survey was undertaken specifically to assess how effectively the National Food Security Act, 2013 — which aims to provide subsidized food grains to approximately two-thirds of the country's 1.4 billion people — has been implemented since it became operational in Gujarat about a decade ago. A total of 1,261 households were included in the survey, mostly belonging to marginalised communities, with a deliberate effort to include those facing social vulnerabilities such as single women, the disabled, and the elderly.

"The results are not representative of the state on average, but they give an indication of what is happening among some of the vulnerable communities in the state — these were the communities and families that the NFSA was expected to help," a survey note underlines. It adds, "Over a third (34%) belonged to Adivasi communities and more than half (54%) to OBC communities. Most of the Adivasi respondents are from Dahod and Panchmahal, and the OBCs from Bhavnagar and Morbi. The remaining were SCs and OBCs, with only 21 respondents belonging to the 'general' category."

While 86% of the respondents reported having a smartphone in the household — the lowest in Dahod (77.3%) and highest in Morbi (93.1%) — only 43.7% had cultivable land. Most of the households in Bhavnagar and Morbi owned no cultivable land (over 80%), while in the tribal districts of Dahod and Panchmahal, most households were engaged in their own cultivation, although the land size was less than 2 bighas.

Respondents were asked about the frequency of consumption of different foods for each season (summer, monsoon, winter) — cereals, pulses, fruits and vegetables, milk and milk products, and flesh foods (chicken, meat, eggs) — to define what qualifies as a "full meal."

The "incomplete meal" category was used to identify households where not all members consume rice, dal, fruits, vegetables, milk, curd, meat, eggs, oil, etc., on a regular basis. These households rely mainly on carbohydrate-based food to satisfy hunger.

The "living with hunger" category identified households whose meals are "donated, borrowed, and largely cereal-based, infrequent and inadequate."

The note observed: "In spite of the legislation, which covers 75% of rural households under the targeted public distribution system, the proportion of households which are not food secure is very high. Only around 12% of the households are able to entirely meet their food security needs in the sense of having a diverse diet regularly, including foods from different food groups."