India’s Food System in the Time of COVID-19

• Published in: Economic and political weekly
• Main Authors: Abhishek, Bhamoriya, Vaibhav, Gupta, Puneet, Kaushik, Manu, Kishore, Avinash, Kumar, Ritesh, Sharma, Abhishek, Verma, Shilp
• Format: Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: Mumbai Athena Information Solutions Pvt. Ltd 11.04.2020
• Subjects: Agricultural commodities; Bank technology; Banking; Consumers; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Curfews; Employment; Financial services; Food; Food supply; Fruits; Households; International trade; Lines of credit; Manual workers; Microfinance; Ports; Price regulations; Researchers; Restrictions; Rice; State government; Supply chains; Vegetables; Wage & price controls; Warehouses; Bangladesh; Malaysia; Kenya; Indonesia; India
• ISSN: 0012-9976

While ensuring the free movement of essential goods and availability and safety of labour can mitigate the immediate disruptions in the supply chain, unclogging the financial sector and restoring optimism in the market will take time and heroic efforts from the government. The participants shared their understanding of what was happening on the ground in different parts of India’s and the world’s food system along with the information gleaned from bankers, entrepreneurs, researchers, and policymakers in their individual networks. [...]perishables are not reaching mandis, processing units and households. India is less vulnerable to these disruptions in international food trade in comparison to the other nations like Bangladesh, Nepal, Kenya, etc, as India’s trade dependence—measured as the ratio of the total value of exports and imports of food items to the agricultural gross domestic product (GDP)—is comparatively smaller.