During a recent international workshop on `Ensuring Women's Participation in Food Security' held by the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation in association with World Food Program, they decided to prepare a food insecurity map of India marking the geographical areas, which are more food insecure. The map will identify the most disadvantaged groups that suffer from chronic food insecurity without the help of any safety nets.

It is expected to serve as a guide to national and international agencies to reach the most disadvantaged people and help them with various short-term programmes of food aid and long-term programmes of food security.

The map will cover all aspects of food insecurity, starting from physical access to food, level of deprivation, environment of production and availability, economic ability to purchase food, actual consumption, level of hunger, level of malnutrition and deficiency of micro nutrients.

It is important to look at the sanitation, health and disease of individuals to assess whether they are in a position to assimilate the available food in an effective manner. Past conditions of disease and malnutrition may impair the ability of the individual to utilise the available food and involve himself in productive economic activity.

Similarly, disaster-prone geographical areas, where the people can be affected by droughts, floods, cyclones, etc., more frequently, will also be highlighted.

Each type of insecurity has a different remedy. Hence, it is important to look at the safety nets provided by the state and Central governments such as the public distribution system, poverty alleviating programmes and employment generating programmes, and nutrition supplementing programmes. It is felt that it is important to examine various national and state level programmes and assess their coverage and effectiveness. The aim is to identify the groups of people who are least covered by the safety nets.

The workshop noted the fact that the food insecurity map would not be complete without taking into consideration the `gender bias' exercised in the community. Unfortunately, none of the indicators of food insecurity are available gender-wise.

Participants from India and most of the Asian countries and representatives of the World Food Program were there at the workshop. They suggested that wherever possible,gender-wise food insecurity be assessed. At the national level, only employment information is available gender-wise. Hence, it was suggested that micro-level studies be used to specifically study how insecure women are as compared to men.

How disadvantaged are women and children in their access to food as compared to men? How much more of hunger are they forced to endure silently as compared to men? How unequal is their contribution to income and work as compared to expenditure and food security? It is felt that women normally contribute more to the work of the household, but get a smaller share of the expenditure and food consumption. These aspects may be specially included in the primary data collected during micro-studies.