ITANAGAR, 20 Sep: The third lecture of the international lecture series on ‘Food Connect Us’ was held online at Dera Natung Government College (DNGC) here on Saturday.
It was jointly organized by the anthropology department of DNGC and the food and nutrition and anthropology department of Mrinalini Datta Mahavidyapith, Kolkata.
The invited speaker, Mexico-based Centre for Research and Advanced Studies’ Human Ecology Department Professor Sudip Datta Banik, spoke on the topic ‘Biometry and nutrition laboratory’.
He dwelt on the patterns of questionnaires developed by the FAO to analyse household level food insecurity which are dependent on yes/no pattern only and omitted the questions why and how. Talking about the relation between food insecurity and poverty, he put forth several examples conducted by the Governments of USA, Europe, China and Africa,using different scales, and stated that “most of the studies lack subjectivity on perception of food insecurity.”
He pointed out that empirical research should complement the questionnaire-based survey to find out the answer to the question why and how. Quoting Amartya Sen, he said that poverty is not only related to the economic aspect but is also related to self-respect, social inclusion, stress and anxiety.
Prof Banik expressed concern over India’s situation on food insecurity and advocated the need for developing a standard questionnaire to assess it. His lecture drew the attention of the participants, leading to a question-answer session.
