Every year, soon after the summer season steps at our door, we expect monsoon to arrive, heralding adequate downpour, which is the only source of irrigation for most of our farmers. Since 62 percent of cultivable land in Nepal is said to be rain-fed, monsoon, as a determining factor of agricultural produce, has a vital role in food security.
However, food security is not only about agricultural produces; it is more about people’s access to these produces. In the highly stratified society of Nepal, people from the lowest echelons of the social strata such as Dalits suffer social exclusion and thus are left far behind in the access to food. Food security cannot be understood without taking note of such social dynamics.
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Food security, as Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines it, is a condition where people have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs to live an active and healthy life. Availability, access and utility of food are considered the three main pillars of food security. In other words, to have food security, food should be easily available, accessible and used properly to meet the dietary requirement. Absence of any of these pillars leads to food insecurity.
Approximately, 925 million people around the globe suffer from undernourishment. With 578 million people living under the duress of hunger, Asia and the Pacific region ranks first in terms of food insecurity, according to FAO. Likewise, recent National Planning Commission (NPC) findings suggest 25 percent Nepali are food-poor. Needless to say, the majority of those who suffer are from excluded social groups. For example, 35 percent Dalits in Nepal are reported to be food-poor, which is nearly three times higher than the number of Brahmins.
The entitlement theory proposed by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen could be helpful for us to understand the relationship between food insecurity and social exclusion. Sen discusses food in terms of entitlement—a sort of right, which a person is entitled to enjoy and establish her ownership and command over. According to this concept, people’s inability to establish this ownership—and not a lack of required amount of food—leads them to hunger and other severe forms of food insecurity such as famine. Capability, or people’s ability to lead a life that they have a reason to value, therefore, is essential to overcoming food insecurity. Social exclusion, however, prohibits a person from establishing entitlement over food. Deprived from social relationships, a socially excluded person is bereft of knowledge and skills essential for combating hunger and undernourishment.
Sen suggests endowment, production possibilities and exchange condition as determinants of entitlement. While endowment refers to the ownership over productive resources such as land and labor, production possibilities is about the ability of a person to gain employment. Likewise, exchange condition refers to the environment where a person can barter her craft products with staple food to escape food insecurity trap. Social exclusion strips a person of all these elements, and thus makes the victim suffer from hunger, which is exactly the case of Dalits in Nepal.
Dalits are systematically excluded from land ownership. Indeed, land did not belong to anyone before it was commoditized in the 1950s; it was state property. Those with access to corridors of power—obviously from the upper strata of society in terms of both caste and class—managed to register land in their names, while Dalits were excluded from this process. The impact of such an unjust and unequal land distribution continues to be felt in Nepal. As recent studies suggest, five percent people own 37 percent of arable land, while 24.4 percent people, mostly Dalits, do not own land; 44 percent of Tarai Dalits are landless.
In addition to depriving them of land, social exclusion has further marred the production possibilities of Dalits. They lack the skills and knowledge for decent employment. Suffering hand-to-mouth problems, they use a large portion of their productive time in earning food for survival, which restricts them from gaining academic qualification and training for professional careers. Although there appears to be some improvement in this regard because of recent policies of affirmative action in education and at state mechanisms, the plight of the Dalit mass is still pathetic. While limited qualifications restrict many of them from entering the job market, those who are qualified also find it hard to get jobs because of entrenched prejudices. Dalits’ hold on officer and above position in both government and non-government agencies is one percent or below, whereas privileged caste groups have more than 70 percent hold. The data clearly depicts how biased the job market in Nepal is against Dalits.
Excluded from land and consequently deprived of job opportunities, the only options available to Dalits have been their traditional occupations and labor. Their skills of ironwork, leatherwork, tailoring, entertainment and labor for agricultural sector and cleaning purpose have been their main sources of livelihood. However, these occupations are facing challenges these days. The traditional occupations are based on the agrarian notion of barter system, which therefore yield very low monetary returns for Dalits today; on the other hand, young generations of Dalits appear indifferent towards these occupations due to the feeling of humiliation associated with them. As a result, only 19 percent young Dalits adopt their traditional occupations.
Around 35 percent Dalits are reported to be food-poor, which is nearly three times the number of food-poor Brahmins.
Moreover, under the sway of globalization and liberal market economy, Dalits find it hard to compete with the influx of foreign goods. In principle, people with occupational dexterity should have seized the global market offered by globalization, but unfortunately, this has not been the case with Nepali Dalits because of the absence of proper policies. Instead, non-Dalits appear to be seizing the opportunity. The leading tailoring centers, garment and shoes companies, iron and music industries in the country are owned by non-Dalits, yet they are not treated as Dalits. Thus the exchange condition for the socially excluded group, Dalit, has not been favorable. Because of social exclusion and consequent capability deprivation, Dalits are left with very limited opportunities.
Households spending more than 75 percent of their expenditure on food are more likely to suffer food insecurity. Thirty-nine percent Dalits households, according to the 2013 NPC report, fall under this category, which is 6.5 times higher than the proportion of Newars, nearly four times higher than the Brahmins and nearly double than the Chhetris. The percentage of Newar, Brahmin and Chhetri households spending a high percentage of their expenditure on food is 6, 11 and 20 respectively.
Social exclusion and food insecurity are thus mutually inclusive, as is evident in the case of Nepali Dalits. Therefore, it is first important to address social exclusion to overcome food insecurity.
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