Research Area: Agriculture Transformation, Food Systems & Nutrition Transition
The Future of India’s Social Safety Nets: Focus, Form, and Scope
India’s rapid economic growth and wealth creation in the past three decades have been marred by its persistently high levels of poverty and child undernutrition, along with rising inequality. Social safety nets, for those left behind, have therefore gained in eminence as a redistributive mechanism....
Food, Agriculture, and Nutrition in South Asia: Building Healthy, Sustainable Food Systems
TCI’s report on Food, Agriculture, and Nutrition in South Asia: Building Healthy, Sustainable Food Systems (FAN-SA) examines trends in nutrition, agriculture, and food consumption in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, offering a range of policy instruments for improving nutrition outcomes...
Promoting Millets in the Public Distribution System
This special policy brief provides cost-saving estimates associated with the potential introduction of millets into India’s Public Distribution System (PDS), which provides subsidized food to more than 800 million people. This analysis provides policymakers and other stakeholders with valuable information that can be used to...
Food Systems Transformation in Asia – A Brief Economic History
Abstract Asia’s food systems have undergone rapid economic and socio-cultural transformations in the past 60 years. During the period, almost all the countries in the region eradicated famines and achieved food self-sufficiency and heterogeneous levels of poverty reduction. Food system transformation in Asian countries has...
Indian Obesity Varies by Gender, Rural/Urban Divide
This policy brief presents the findings of a TCI study examining differences in the incidence of overweight within India according to biological, technological, and environmental factors. The study shows that overweight and obesity rates are tied to such variables as gender and the level of...
To Reduce Stunting, Space Out Births
This policy brief presents the findings of a TCI study exploring the linkages between birth order, time between births, and relative height-for-age. According to the study, birth order affects height when births occur less than three years apart, with the height gap increasing between later-born...
Healthy Diets Are Too Expensive for Most Indians
This policy brief presents the findings of a TCI study assessing the cost of the EAT-Lancet diet in India. The study reveals a significant gap between current food consumption and the EAT-Lancet diet in India. The EAT-Lancet diet costs $3-5 per person per day in...
Food, Agriculture, and Nutrition in Bihar: Getting to Zero Hunger
TCI’s 2022 report on Food, Agriculture, and Nutrition in Bihar (FAN-Bihar) provides a detailed reassessment of the food system approach for achieving the 2nd Sustainable Development Goal (SDG2) — zero hunger by 2030 — in Bihar. The report emphasizes the high rates of malnutrition in...
Essays on the Effects of Migration & Remittances on Households in Rural India
Cornell University, 2021 Abstract: This dissertation focuses on the effects of migration and remittances on the welfare of families left-behind, in the context of farming households in rural India. Labor migration is heavily male dominant in India, and women and children are often left behind....
All Hat and No Cattle: Accountability Following the UN Food Systems Summit
Abstract The United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) is an important moment to garner political and financial attention to the challenges that food systems face. It is a difficult moment with many competing national and global priorities including massive inequities, rapid climate change and a...